


Not Quite Daycare

by orphan_account



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Actual Cat Tybalt, Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen, Witches, will someone please tell me why the moms being bitchy witches together works so well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-04 23:53:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4157718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>alternatively titled "why trusting mercutio with the care of children is generally regarded as a Bad Idea".</p><p>When Romeo and Benvolio fall victim to something that can't be explained, Mercutio is left to outwit a witch in order to save his friends. Along with some unexpected allies, the children of Verona find themselves caught in the middle of a war, and something wicked is swirling their way....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Bad Idea

Mercutio figured that the only real explanation for this had to be that God hated him. But that would be too easy.

"Please sit down," he pleaded, an edge of desperation in his tone as his eyes helplessly observed the two small children standing in front of him. His words fell upon deaf ears; the shorter of the two young boys continued to slowly glance around Mercutio’s bedroom, looking confused and lost, while the other child was hugging himself tightly and seemed ready to burst into tears at any second.

_This is all your fault, Mercutio,_ that little voice in the back of his mind- that infuriatingly calm, rational one that tended to sound a lot like Benvolio- hissed at him. For once, Mercutio was left without a scathing retort he could mentally fire back-because if he was being honest with himself, it totally was his fault. He’d always been aware that there were a lot of women who didn't appreciate his... sense of humor. And quite possibly teasing the old woman with a crooked back, wearing an old nightmare of a hat that that had to have been made out of bat wings or worse- seriously, who _wore_ something like that in this century- hadn’t been Mercutio's wisest idea, but the afternoon had been hot, he had been bored, and he’d had absolutely no reason not to poke jibes at the old witch. Both Benvolio and Romeo had tried to call him down, but Mercutio had been having his fun.

"I'm just teasing the poor woman!" he had exclaimed, spreading his arms wide towards his friends as the old lady glared at his back. "Poor thing- she probably doesn't even know how to put together her own outfit without looking positively batty. Much..." Reaching up, he swiftly managed to swipe the hat from where it sat on the woman's thick grey hair and place it on his own head. "Like this little accessory!"

"Mercutio." Benvolio sounded slightly exasperated, but there was a clear warning in his tone as well. "That’s enough."

"Leave the woman alone, Cutio," agreed Romeo with a sigh that didn’t quite hide the traces of amusement dancing in his blue eyes. "You've played your game out."

"Me? Played out?" Mercutio feigned a gasp of offense. "Never!" A movement out of the corner of his eye brought his attention back to the old woman, who was now gathering up her bag and painstakingly pulling herself up from the park bench, her back creaking ominously as she did so. "Besides," he half-sang, rounding back on the woman with his hands on his hips. "The lady needs my help!"

"I need no such thing!" The ferocity in the woman's snarl actually had Romeo draw back with alarmed eyes; but Mercutio, bold as ever, was undeterred.

"Come now, a lovely lady such as yourself shouldn't have to carry all her bags on her own. You might dent your cauldron- or worse, spill your potions! Could anything be worse?"

"You should listen to your friends more, insolent brat!" The old hag nearly took his hand off with a swipe of her gnarled fingernails, and Mercutio drew back with an over-dramatized gasp before dashing over and pretending to hide behind Benvolio. "They behave maturely, while you act like little more than a child! You're going to have to learn to grow up, young Escalus- very soon!"

All three teenagers were silent as the old hag turned on her heel and stalked off. Mercutio was more than ready to laugh the old woman's warning off and continue on with his day. Such an event was little more than a game to him; and if someone couldn't handle a few harmless barbs, then what was the use of playing with them at all? Even the woman knowing his family name wasn’t surprising, given how high-profile the royal family was in Verona. The whole incident would have troubled him little were it not for the events that followed a few minutes after the departure of the woman.

To put it simply- Romeo collapsed. One second the three teenagers were walking down the street, intent on taking the side roads back to the palace and finding some food there; the cook should, Mercutio had assured them, be preparing dinner right at that moment, and her risotto was without a doubt the best in all of Verona. The next second, Romeo stumbled. His hand reached out to brace himself against the wall as he staggered to the side like a drunken man. Both Benvolio and Mercutio spun towards the young Montague just seconds before he suddenly crumpled to the ground with a faint sigh, going still the moment his body hit the pavement.

_"Romeo!"_ Benvolio wasted no time in rushing to his cousin's aid; but it was only seconds before he sunk to his knees in kind, the same affliction that had struck down Romeo apparently seizing him as well. The dark haired boy inhaled a sharp gasp and looked suddenly dazed, hands going still on his cousin’s shoulders, before he tipped forward dizzily- only to be immediately caught up in Mercutio's arms.

_"Mercu..."_ Benvolio managed to breathe out before his head fell against Mercutio's shoulder, his entire body going limp as a rag doll. Mercutio's attempts to rouse his friends had gone unheralded; it was at that point, slightly panicked and devoid of any other options, he had taken it upon himself to drag his friends back home.

Exactly how they had gotten here from there Mercutio wasn't sure; he vaguely could recall hoisting Benvolio over his shoulder, dragging Romeo to his feet and staggering the remaining short distance to the palace. Perhaps his first indication that something was seriously bizarre should have been when he could no longer feel the pronounced weight of Benvolio's body pressing down on his back, or when Romeo seemed to become considerably easier to lead along. He knew he must have looked like quite the sight, sneaking in through the service entrance with two unconscious Montagues trailing along with him, and that thought- along with how long it would take to fetch the palace doctor and whether or not that was even necessary (he really hoped it wasn't)- occupied his brain up until the moment they finally reached the bedroom and he gratefully laid his two burdens down on his bed...

Only to find both Montague heirs to be quite changed indeed.

It hadn't been long afterwards that Benvolio and Romeo finally awakened from their unconscious state; and that lead them up to where they were at that very moment. It was, if Mercutio could proclaim so himself, quite a precarious little situation.

The two cousins had... shrunk. Well, that was putting it lightly; they hadn't simply regressed in size, but they had clearly slipped backwards in age as well. Instead of the two teenagers Mercutio had been sure he was dragging into the palace just moments before, he was now looking at two groggy and frightened small children. For the first time in a long time, it dawned on Mercutio that he might just be in over his head.

“Who- who are you? Where’s mamma?”

Even as a child, Romeo had been... temperamental. If temperamental was the right word for a child who was prone to crying over nothing and everything at once; Romeo used to cry if it was raining outside, or if someone else was eyeing one of his toys, or if he couldn't find his shoes... actually, as a child Mercutio could remember Romeo crying over just about everything. The Romeo sitting in front of him now, with his mop of fair curls and his rosy, plump cheeks, couldn't have been more than four years old, and he looked seconds away from tears at that very moment.

Mercutio was in trouble. If child-Romeo began to bawl, surely the castle's servants would come in to investigate just what the Prince of Verona's nephew was doing with a crying child in his room. Aside from the obvious unfortunate implications of having two small boys standing, frightened and barely clothed (Romeo and Benvolio had shrunk; their clothes, it appeared, had not) in the middle of his bedroom, whatever had happened to the two Montagues would undoubtedly be blamed on _him._

"Romeo," Mercutio ventured, speaking for just the second time since the children had woken from their slumber, "it's okay. Please don't start crying."

The boy's lower lip trembled.

"Please."

His face bordered dangerously close to crumpling.

"Your mother will be angry if you start crying now."

That was the straw that snapped the camel's back; Romeo let out a whimper which rapidly devolved into a full-on wail, leaving both Mercutio and mini-Benvolio with their hands pressed tightly over their ears. Mercutio ran around the room like a headless chicken, searching frantically for something- anything- to calm Romeo down.

He settled at last for a blanket that he snatched off the end of his bed. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but when the blanket was tossed over his head and Romeo's howling immediately ceased Mercutio sent a silent thanks to the maid who'd had the good sense to place the quilt there that day. In the silence that followed the Wailing Romeo Disaster, Mercutio slowly turned on his heel to face the other little boy behind him. Benvolio stared up at him solemnly as Mercutio raised an eyebrow, challenging him to cry as well. The evident tranquility in Benvolio’s hazel gaze, however unreadable it may be, did seem to reassure him that he had no intention of following suit of his cousin.

The first time Mercutio had laid eyes on Benvolio, he had been seven and the Montague boy had been six. Benvolio had just moved to Verona to live with his aunt and uncle after the untimely death of his parents, and Mercutio distinctly remembered at the time thinking how _strange_ the other boy looked. For one thing, he had been small then and he seemed even smaller now; compared to the reasonably sized Romeo, little Benvolio looked almost like a two year old next to his cousin. And then there were his eyes; while he had a bit more baby fat on his cheeks now than his six year old self would have, his large hazel eyes still had not quite grown into his face. They stared up at Mercutio, bewildered but calm, framed by dark hair that was curlier now than it would be years into the future. It just wasn’t natural for eyes like that to belong to a child that age; his gaze pierced Mercutio as if he were able to read every single thing about him all at once, and had a distinct understanding that whatever was going on at that moment was _all his fault._ Mercutio shifted uncomfortably under Benvolio’s stare, but either the toddler gave much less consideration to social conventions than his teenage self or he was enjoying this, because his gaze didn’t break. Mercutio finally couldn’t tolerate it anymore; with a lack of any more blankets to toss over the second child’s head, he spun around and briskly made his way over to his dresser.

Bracing himself against the piece of wooden furniture, Mercutio’s eyes raised to meet his reflection in the mirror; he looked pale, almost ill, and it dawned on him now that to the children- especially poor Romeo, who he realized with a dull sort of alarm was still standing like a statue under the blanket- he must have looked like a ghost. A far cry from his usual dashing self, to be sure; but as he ran a hand through his golden hair, smoothing it down as best he could, he reasoned that it wasn’t every day that one witnessed their two best friends somehow deaged into small children.

Small children. Right. Romeo and Benvolio were kids- not just kids, _little_ kids, kids who may or may not have been old enough to even be in school yet. Mercutio’s eyes widened a bit more, turning to his reflection as if desperately pleading for help; this was a downright disaster. First and foremost, unlike both Romeo and Benvolio, Mercutio wasn’t good with kids- Mercutio didn’t even _like_ kids. Children were too innocent, too impressionable, too… not people who should be allowed around someone like Mercutio, who was quite proudly a terrible influence. And now he suddenly found himself with two of them, two children whom he had absolutely no clue what to do with.

How had this happened? The argument could be made, he supposed, that it had been his fault- and to be fair, teasing the old bat in the park might have been one of his least intelligent ideas of the day. But he could never have anticipated anything like this- a spell! It had to have been a spell that the old crone cast upon the two Montagues after the encounter in the park. Mercutio normally would never believe in something so absurd, if only he were not seeing the evidence in front of his own two eyes. If he were not so utterly screwed he might have found it laughable, and still he pressed a hand over his face and laughed anyway- leave it to him to get on the wrong side of a witch!

Looking back into the mirror again, his eyes locked once more on Benvolio; the child, now sitting on Mercutio’s carpet, was studying him with unabashed curiosity.

Mercutio stared back at him brazenly, raising an eyebrow as he turned from the mirror’s reflection to the actual child sitting in the middle of the room. In spite of Romeo’s howling just minutes earlier, the room was now all too silent; and there was very little that unsettled Mercutio more than utter silence. “Well?” he questioned the voiceless child, who in turn simply blinked back at him. “Come on. Usually you’d have something exasperated and slightly irritated to say by now.”

Benvolio tilted his head, and it occurred to Mercutio that the child (assuming that, just as the case had appeared to be with Romeo, he had no knowledge of his older self) probably didn’t even know who he was. The thought made Mercutio wince. It seemed like the situation just kept getting worse and worse- and the one person who Mercutio regularly was able to trust enough to ask advice from was now currently a toddler.

“Come on, Benny,” he sighed, slowly sliding down the dresser until he came to rest on the floor. “Give me something, at least. Any help at all. Just a hint of what to do here.”

“I’m cold.”

Mercutio’s head shot up; unless the stress and utter absurdity of the situation was finally getting to him, Benvolio had just spoke. He wasn’t sure if he’d really been expecting to garner a reaction out of the boy, but now that he had he could hardly believe it himself.

“Cold- right, right.” Benvolio had stepped right out of his oversized clothes, and now for all intents and purposes was naked on Mercutio’s bedroom floor (if Mercutio had ever pictured a scenario involving Benvolio naked on his floor, this had been far from what he’d had in mind). Mercutio abruptly pulled himself to his feet again, glancing hastily around the room before drawing back towards his bed, tilting his head in thought. “Okay, so first of all we need to find the two of you some clothes- and food, of course, you’re right, Benvolio. Food’s good, food is important! Essentials first, those are the most necessary things- and then we can take a crack at the real problem at hand! Benvolio, small as you now may be, you’re a genius!”

The child stared up as the lanky blond dashed across the room, throwing his leather jacket over his shoulders with ease and snatching his phone up off of his desk. He was halfway out the door before he remembered that there were still two small children in his room. “Right-” Mercutio stopped, stared, and then pointed at Benvolio. “You’re in charge! Don’t move until I get back!”

“It’s dark in here!” he heard Romeo utter from under the blanket; Benvolio, hearing this as well, turned and lightly patted his cousin’s shoulder. Deciding that this meant both children were in as good of hands as any, Mercutio dashed out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

His first goal was to make it to the shops. His second was to figure out how to reverse a witch’s curse.

All in all, Mercutio mused as he broke out of the palace doors and into the street outside, there were worse situations to be in.


	2. Juliet

Getting across town proved to be the easy part; the tricky part revealed itself once he’d actually reached the market and it occurred to him how difficult it would actually be for him to waltz into a shop and buy children’s clothing. Mercutio, in an utter lack of foreplanning that disappointed even himself, he evidently neglected to think just how suspicious the Prince’s nephew, a known troublemaker no less, buying clothes for small children might look. He suspected that a simple, _“They’re for me,”_ would hardly put the matter at ease, especially in the eyes of gossipy townsfolk; for some time Mercutio found himself loitering around the children’s clothing shop, drifting about the surrounding stores and vendors with no more than a casual notice of their wares. It was out of the question to leave the market without getting Romeo and Benvolio some sort of presentable attire; the only question was how he intended to do such a thing without looking all too suspicious.

“Mother asked for apples, I’m sure. Where’s are the apples- oh, over here! Here, Tybalt!”

The clear voice caught Mercutio’s keen ear over the din of the surrounding crowd for no other reason than the name attached to the end of the speaker’s words- like calling one’s cherished pet to your side, Mercutio thought wryly as he turned his head to find the speaker and her companion in the midst of the surrounding townsfolk. It didn’t take long; whether he meant to or not, Tybalt Capulet, in his dark attire and grim demeanor, had a certain way of standing out from the crowd. He drifted as an ever-watchful shadow behind a spectre of a girl clothed in pale cream-colored satin, with long, dark hair pinned back out of her face that flowed behind her as she weaved her way through the market.

Of course he would wind up running in to Tybalt: with the way his day was going, Mercutio wasn’t sure why he was even surprised. The figure of the Capulet scion lurked, tall and vigilant as always, some distance behind the girl that Mercutio vaguely recognize to be Lord Capulet’s only daughter. Despite not being sure of her name, he knew Tybalt’s well enough; and he knew that if Tybalt was in a bad mood and managed to catch sight of him, hell just might be raised.

Mercutio would always deny, to anyone that asked, that he started fights for any reason other than the sheer thrill of it; perhaps, true, he enjoyed seeing the seeds of his mischief come to bear fruit, preferably in the most public place possible. But that was his only reason; he certainly didn’t pick fights out of frustration, or as a way to relieve stress. Leave the hate and tension to the Montagues and the Capulets, he always thought, for there was more than enough of it; instead, his job was to be a fly buzzing around people’s ears, dodging their swats for fun- and he played his role just as well as any other, with a vigor that left some baffled.

That said, he couldn’t exactly pinpoint why he decided to approach the Capulet girl- to provoke a reaction out of Tybalt, no doubt, but not for any reason other than that, surely. She was pretty, all fair skin, high cheekbones, and soft features, a picture that vaguely called to mind the image of a setting sun; but she wasn’t exactly Mercutio’s type. Still, it was more than easy for him to saunter up to her as she busied herself examining apples at the vendor for bruises, frowning down at the fruit in her hand and barely noticing Mercutio’s presence or the dazzling smile he shot her until he spoke.

“A bruised fruit is just as good as any other, or so it’s been said. Do you agree with that? Can’t say I do. Personally, I think that if you can afford to be picky with what you eat, be it sweet or bitter, you’re better off than the masses.”

The girl glanced up at him, her dark eyes inquisitive and so innocent that Mercutio almost felt guilty. “Oh?”

“Indeed.” He flashed another grin, now that she was actually aware enough to see it, and a trace of a smile flickered over her own lips. “Then again, my own fruits are always in prime condition, so I don’t suppose I could rightly say. What’s your poison- do you prefer your fruit sour, sweet, or somewhere in between?”

The Capulet girl stared for a long moment, her eyes alternating between the boy in front of her and the fruit she held in her hand. “I… prefer grapes, actually,” she said after a short silence, sounding uncertain of her words. “But you can’t make a pie with grapes- or, at least not a good one, I know from experience- so I’m getting apples.”

Mercutio nodded solemnly, deciding at once that the best course of action would be to drop the matter entirely. “A wise choice,” he agreed, his eye unconsciously roving around the market for any trace of the conspicuously absent Tybalt. As he did so, his gaze was drawn back to the clothing shop- and all at once, an idea seemed to magnetize itself together in his mind.

“Say,” he suddenly remarked, and the girl turned back towards him once more. “Apples for oranges, would you mind doing me a favor?”

The girl seemed to perk up; her eyebrows raised slightly as Mercutio continued, fingering his wallet obviously in one hand. “I’ve come into a certain necessity for a certain clothing item, and I need it by today or else I’m in a good amount of trouble. The problem is, I can’t very well just walk up and buy these items without raising eyebrows; however, should someone less conspicuous- say, a fair lady like yourself- be willing to purchase them for me with my own money in hand... If you’d do this for me, I’m sure I could…” He paused, eyebrows furrowing slightly as he deliberated over just what he could do for her; from their earlier exchange it was clear that anything sexual was less than an option, and he wasn’t sure what else he could offer besides perhaps money. If the girl was anything like her cousin, Mercutio supposed that she would prefer a blood sacrifice to anything he had to offer, but maybe Tybalt was just _special_ that way…

“I’ll do it.”

Mercutio blinked in surprise. “Oh.” That had certainly been… easier than he’d anticipated.

The girl tilted her head expectantly. “Just what exactly do you need me to get for you?” Her doe eyes flickered between the clothing store and Mercutio before slowly widening in understanding. “Oh. Is it a dress? In that case, I’m sure I’ll be able to pick out something suitable, and you’re slender enough that it should fit-”

“What? No! I don’t need-”

“A dress?”

“Yes- no! I don’t need a dress, that is not what I’m asking for.” A dress, Mercutio supposed, handing the girl twenty dollars, would probably be more Tybalt’s fashion than it would his- he could picture the lanky fighter in a ballgown surprisingly well, and the thought made him feel so uncomfortable in more than one way that he quickly diverted his attention back to the matter at hand. “I mean, I need children’s clothing. Clothes for young boys, to be exact, probably around four years old, though one of them certainly hasn’t been eating all his vegetables because he looks barely out of diapers-” Suddenly struck by another horrifying thought, his golden eyes widened visibly before he turned to the girl again. “Just a quick question for you, do you know if four year olds are out of diapers yet? Or-”

“What do you think you’re _doing_ , Escalus?”

The harsh voice- from directly behind him no less, sounding in his ear in a way that Mercutio had no way of expecting and certainly did not make him jump even a little, no matter what the Capulet girl’s subsequent giggle might have indicated- was familiar enough to belong to one person only. “Ah,” Mercutio greeted, spreading his arms as he turned to finally greet the Capulet cousin. “Good afternoon to you too, Tybalt.”

“Juliet.” Tybalt’s dark eyes were fixed over Mercutio’s shoulder. “If you could leave us alone for a moment, I’ll dispose of this pest properly.”

The girl looked minorly taken aback by the evident hostility between the two, but she was quick to nod and turn in the other direction, walking off- _with my money, no less,_ Mercutio thought sourly- and leaving the two young men alone. Tybalt’s hand lingered over the sword sheathed in his belt- as it often did, Mercutio had learned, when he was trying to come off as intimidating.

“What are you trying to do?” he half-growled, and Mercutio shrugged nonchalantly.

“Just making some light conversation at the market, dear Tybalt. Is that so wrong?”

“Come within a hundred feet of Juliet again and I’ll impale you so quickly that you won’t realize what’s even happened until there’s a blade sticking out of your eye.”

“Glad to see you haven’t lost your charm since we last met,” the blond noted wryly. “I was asking for a favor. That’s all.”

“What favor could she do you?” Tybalt looked as if the other had physically struck him- for a moment, Mercutio wondered if he was going to try to impale him on the spot. That would be a bit more excitement than he’d planned for today- then again, he was in over his head anyhow.

“Oh, you know-” Mercutio, turning his attention to the cart full of apples once more, cast a roguish grin over his shoulder at the other. “Favors.”

“Why you-”

“I’m not one to soil her virtue, I’m not that type of man, let’s not get all up into our homicidal tendencies, dear Tybalt-” Because he did look dangerously close to spearing Mercutio a new hole and he happened to _value his life_ thank you very much, even in the face of Tybalt’s rather spectacular anger management issues. “There are _other_ favors a man might need from such an innocent face… I don’t expect you’d understand.”

“You’re running out of warnings fast, Mercutio. Leave and take your rabble with you, or else-”

“Or else I’ll greet death with a kiss? How utterly mundane.”

A flash of fury passed over Tybalt’s face, and Mercutio knew he’d finally pushed his boundaries to breaking just a second before Tybalt’s fist flew up to grip the front of his shirt. “Then if _you want to fight, I’ll gladly-_ ”

“Please don’t.” This third voice cut into their confrontation as cleanly as a knife severing thread, and both teenagers spun rather guiltily to face Juliet- who stood behind them, now with a bag in hand instead of the money she’d been given earlier, and looking for all the world disapproving but unsurprised. “Tybalt, you know that mother said no fighting today, you heard her as clearly as I did. Besides,” she said, inclining her head towards Mercutio, “I was only doing him an easy favor. Here.” The bag in her hands was easily passed off to Mercutio- who, peering inside, could see that Juliet had managed to pick out just what he’d been looking for. The girl blinked at him, dark eyes wide and imploring. “That’s enough, isn’t it? There wasn’t any change left over.”

Mercutio sent her another smile, this one just a bit more genuine than before, and nodded his head in thanks. “These are perfect, thank you.”

Tybalt, it seemed, just couldn’t keep his overly-suspicious nose out of things that didn’t belong to him, however, because the next second he was peering into Mercutio’s bag and his eyes were narrowing at the contents. “Children’s clothes?” he intoned. “What do you need children’s clothes for?”

“They’re for the gnomes that live in the courtyard,” Mercutio returned without missing a beat. “Delightful little creatures, harmless on most days, but recently they’ve been keeping me from my sleep all night, and they have the most terrible habit of never wearing any clothes-”

His empty ramblings were enough to steal a giggle from Juliet, but the Capulet boy seemed to be growing more and more alarmed. Countless possibilities of why Mercutio might need children’s attire, each more horrifying than the last, were surely running through his head, and it was almost amusing to watch the rising alarm on his face right to the point where he demanded, his voice laced with dread, “Mercutio, did you _steal_ a set of children?”

Mercutio drew back, for once genuinely offended. “Hey! Now there’s an implication I protest- I’ve never stolen anything substantial in my life, least of all children! Why would I even _want_ to steal children, Tybalt? Where would I put them?”

“Then what-” Tybalt briskly snatched up the bag and held it over Mercutio’s head- _seriously,_ the just-shorter blond bemoaned mutely, _when had Tybalt gotten so infuriatingly tall_ \- “are you doing with this?”

“If you don’t mind me asking, I’d like to know as well,” remarked Juliet, standing at her cousin’s side. “Since I did get the clothes for you in the first place. Think of it as returning the favor.”

 _Returning the favor,_ Mercutio thought sourly, eyes flickering rapidly between the set of Capulet’s in front of him. They really did look alike, he noted now once he stared at them side by side- they both had the dark, silky hair of Lord Capulet, and Lady Capulet’s own smoky dark eyes that seemed to pierce you when fixed. The girl did not have the height of her cousin, and her cousin not Juliet’s delicacy of features, but they were both equally intense in a mirrored way, and under their double stares Mercutio found himself chafing more and more. It was almost unbearable, looking at them like that; he tried turning away, hoping to quickly vanish into the crowd, but Tybalt’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“It’s none of your business!” Mercutio retorted sharply, glaring at the tall boy with all traces of humor gone from his face. “I’m handling it, so let me be!”

“What have you done?” Tybalt’s words came out more as an order, but not for the first time Mercutio regretted the fact that he knew the Capulet scion better than he liked to let on. It was more of a _“what have you gotten yourself into, Mercutio,”_ question, and it stung the blond boy to hear what for Tybalt might have almost been concern in his tone. This wasn’t anything he had any right to get involved in; what had happened was Mercutio’s problem (as well as Benvolio and Romeo’s too, obviously) and no one else needed to interfere.

Still- why was Tybalt so worked up over this? For a man who had been threatening to murder him mere minutes ago, he certainly seemed surprisingly perturbed by Mercutio’s present situation. It wasn’t as if Tybalt could be… worried for him?

“It has to do with the Montagues, so you won’t like it.”

As predicted, as soon as the words were out of his mouth Tybalt drew back, his face souring in disgust. Mercutio had known that, if nothing else, bringing up his friendship with the Montagues would most definitely repel Tybalt instantly.

But what he hadn’t counted on was the girl- Juliet, who still stared on with those inquisitive chestnut eyes, her hand reaching out when Mercutio tried to turn away again. “Wait!” she called out. “I still want to hear!”

Mercutio paid her no mind, pressing on through the crowd, but it seemed like the damned girl was following after him. “If you’re in any sort of trouble, perhaps we could help you! I don’t care even if it has to do with the Montagues, I want-” Her arm seized upon his and Mercutio drew to a halt, spinning around and nearly sending Juliet back with the force of her own surprise. “To help,” she finished, straightening up and meeting him in the eye- she was taller than Romeo, Mercutio now noted with some amusement, nearly as tall as he himself was. But it was the expression alight in her eyes that took Mercutio aback the most- somewhere between ferocity and desperate boredom. It was a look Mercutio knew well- it was what had driven him to approach her in the market today, what seemed to always drive his own fights and mischief; it was a desperation to _do_ something, to _be_ somewhere, to have an effect on something that was tangible.

This girl, Mercutio realized with a dawning sense of awe, this innocent little Capulet girl, was just like him.

His eyes flickered from her to her cousin rapidly approaching behind her, like a shark effortlessly cutting his way through a sea of minnows, and- knowing full well how likely he was to regret this choice later- Mercutio made his decision.

“Juliet Capulet, do you believe in witches?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering exactly what time period this (or any of my fics) are in, my response to you is merely some helpless shrugging alone with a few distressed dinosaur noises. I actually have no clue. (Think, like, Rómeó és Júlia dystopian!Verona? Or something along the lines of that? I don't know, its still Verona and the characters are still the characters, just don't ask me about time period.)
> 
> Anyway- in case you couldn't tell, I love the Capulets. To death. (*booing from crowd*) Even Tybalt, messed up baby as he is.


	3. Can't

“And so you see, now both Benvolio and Romeo are indubitably children, and it looks like they plan to stay that way for an indefinite period of time unless I’m able to somehow reverse the spell.”

Mercutio leaned forward, elbows on his knees, as he studied the expressions of the two Capulets in front of him. He had done his part; he had told his side of the story, about the hag and the spell and the sudden mini-Montagues he now had residing in his own bedroom. Whether or not he was believed was up to the two teenagers in front of him now. Tybalt, predictably, looked as if he’d just swallowed something frightfully sour and couldn’t get the taste out of his mouth; his eyes bore into the bench he was sitting on, as if he were trying to decode the answers to Mercutio’s tale through the holes of termites in the wood. Juliet was much more raptly inquisitive, seeming almost enthralled by the tale being laid out in front of her; her delicate eyebrows were knitted pensively, and one hand rested on her cheek as she leaned against it. Mercutio could practically see the thousands of thoughts running through her head at rapid pace in response to his explanation, and it seemed almost as if she were searching for words. He couldn’t really find himself surprised; had he been the one on the receiving end of such an impossible tale, he doubted he would have believed it either.

What if the Capulets didn’t believe him- what then? A better question, Mercutio supposed, was what would happen if they did. He had no reason to assume that they would go out of their way to help him; in fact, his very motives as to sharing the tale with them at all seemed all too elusive even now. He had done so, he supposed, in response to Juliet; but what had he been hoping to gain?

In the end, Mercutio supposed, his reasons had been present somehow; and it was now all up to whether or not the Capulets chose to believe him.

Juliet was the one who spoke up first. “It’s… almost too much to be real. Like something out of a storybook.” Her hands folded in her lap, clasping tersely, and she studied them for a few seconds before her gaze flickered back to Mercutio once more. “I’m altogether not sure what to even say to you. It’s a story difficult to believe.”

A sharp _“tch”_ caused both Mercutio and the girl’s heads to be turned towards their third listener; Tybalt, brow furrowed darkly, rose from the bench and sent a glower towards Mercutio, looking angrier than the other boy had seen of him all day.

“That’s because it’s fake,” he ground out between his teeth. “He’s a dirty liar, that’s all he is. I should have known he would try to lead us on with one of his impossible little stories. After all this, too- Juliet, come on. Don’t waste your breath on worthless fools like him.”

Mercutio’s eyes narrowed; he returned the heated glare the Capulet sent him with an icy one of his own. This wasn’t any different from what he had expected; how like Tybalt to degrade him, to chose to call him a fool. He wasn’t sure why- or even if- he had expected any different.

Juliet, however, made no move to leave. His foot tapping impatiently, Tybalt crossed his arms. _“Juliet.”_

“If he’s lying,” the girl said suddenly, “then why go out of his way to buy the clothes?”

“Planning some other mischief, no doubt. You can’t get involved. Come home now, we have what we need.”

_Can’t._ The words seemed to strike a chord in Juliet; she drew back from her cousin slightly, her eyes flickering over to the golden haired boy sat next to her. “I want to help you.” She spoke slowly, deliberate enough for her cousin to hear, and Tybalt immediately began to splutter indignantly.

“J- Juliet-”

“I think I might be able to help,” she continued. “If we work together, we should be able to figure out at least some way to reverse this curse. Not to mention, if what you’ve told me is true then it’s obvious that you’ve got no idea how to take care of children, so you’ll need help anyways.”

Mercutio nodded his concession, not seeing any point in even trying to refute her denunciation of his competence; but the Capulet cousin was still making his presence known, as loudly and obviously as possible.

“Juliet, if you don’t come home now I will be forced to tell your parents that you are associating with Montagues, and your father will-”

“I would be grateful for your help, if you chose to give it.” Both Mercutio and Juliet seemed agreed upon ignoring Tybalt at every point possible. Juliet returned Mercutio’s words of confidence with a warm smile of her own brushing a strand of flyaway dark hair behind her ear and taking up the bag of clothes before pushing herself up off the bench.

“I do,” she proclaimed, nodding certainly at Mercutio. “Now, I suppose the first thing to do would be to see the children themselves; if you would take me to them?”

“Certainly.” Mercutio stood from the bench as well, thrusting the Capulets few grocery bags into a stunned Tybalt’s arms. The stunned teenager had gone pale as a ghost.

“Juliet Filomena Diana Capulet, if you do not cease this madness this instant-”

“Shall we go then?”

“We shall?”

As the two strode off side by side in the direction of Verona’s palace, leaving Tybalt standing alone beside a now empty park bench, the scion of the Capulet family decided that he really, really needed a vacation from Verona and all of its occupants- especially his family, as well as any and all of the prince’s relatives.

xXx

Mercutio wasn’t sure what he had been expecting once he arrived back at the palace. Perhaps he’d assumed he would find it in flames, burning to the ground; perhaps the entire palace staff and all occupants, his uncle and brother included, would be magically transformed into five year olds as well. Compared with the fantastic scenarios that had been running through his brain since he left the children there nearly an hour ago, the near-total calm he found upon at last returning home with Juliet in tow felt almost disappointing.

He didn’t bother with the servant’s entrance this time, not really caring who saw him (and also perhaps not wanting it to seem to Juliet as if he were breaking into the palace instead of actually being a resident there). As he led the girl through the front entrance she seemed overwhelmed, her eyes roving all around as she trailed through the halls after him, seeming to want to take in everything at once- from the portraits on the wall to the ornate decorations, even the staff who bustled by without giving her more than a passing wary glance (Mercutio bringing back ladies- and more than a few gentlemen as well- was really no longer remarked upon among the serving staff, as long as it didn’t come to the attention of the prince himself).

“I’ve never been to the palace before,” she chirped almost brightly as she trailed Mercutio through the brightly lit corridors. “It’s very nice here. It must be fantastic living in a place like this, I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mercutio lied. “I’ve only lived here all my life.”

“Then I suppose you wouldn’t have any experience with anything else- that makes sense.” Juliet was silent once more, pausing momentarily to admire a portrait of a queen from several decades ago before trotting after Mercutio once more. “My parents will probably be angry if they find out I’m here, but I really don’t care; so few interesting things tend to happen to me that I suppose it’s only fair to take advantage of them when you’re able to find them. Don’t you agree?”

“I suppose.” It was unlike Mercutio to be so quiet; and he really was grateful to Juliet for filling up what might otherwise have been an awkward silence. But his mind was too preoccupied with thoughts of poor Romeo and Benvolio, stuck in his room for so long. Could children really stay put for as long as he’d left them? What if they had somehow escaped, and were roaming through the palace now? What if they had plunged off the balcony, and at that moment were little more than child-shaped smudges in the middle of the courtyard? What if-

Mercutio stopped abruptly, causing Juliet to jerk to a halt behind him. “I’ve passed my room,” he announced shortly, before turning on his heel and doubling back a few paces to the door he had been too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice.

Pausing once before opening the door, he pressed an ear to the wood to listen inside. His golden eyes narrowed as his hand tensed on the doorknob; it was quiet. _Too_ quiet.

He almost couldn’t bear the thought of opening the door, dreading what he would see inside. What could he say to the Montagues if somehow both boys managed to meet their deaths under his care as children of all things? How would he live with himself? How had a thing like this even happened in the first place?

“Are they in there?” The sudden voice, combined with the head unexpectedly peering over his shoulder, snapped himself out of his trance and caused him to jump. Juliet ricocheted back a few feet but quickly recovered herself, only to be taken aback by the clean panic in Mercutio’s eyes. Suddenly understanding his own fears, she hastily let out a nervous laugh, crossing her arms in front of her. “I mean, of course they’re in there! Where else would they be? Just joking!”

“Don’t.”

“Alright.”

Juliet’s interruption, however, had helped to distract Mercutio just enough that he was able to push open the door before he managed to lose his nerve. The sight that greeted him in the darkened room... was little more than he’d left behind an hour earlier. 

Romeo had somehow managed to curl up on Mercutio’s own bed with the blanket that had been tossed over his head earlier and was now curled up in a slightly fitful sleep; Benvolio was still sitting on the floor in a pile of his own clothes, exactly in the spot he had been in before he left.

“I didn’t move,” he spoke, head turning to Mercutio illuminated in the doorway. “Like you told me.”

“G-good… boy…” What was he now, a toddler or a dog?

“There are… actually children!” Mercutio was gently pushed back as Juliet popped up under the arm which was holding the door open, her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the two little boys. Benvolio tilted his head at the stranger, but he remained silent even as Juliet approached him.

“Hello,” she greeted in a soft voice, crouching down to his level on the floor and extending a hand. “What might your name be?”

The child pursed his lips up at her for a moment before deciding to speak. “B-Benvolio Montague,” he replied almost shyly, delicately tracing her open palm with one of his fingers. As Juliet allowed him to, he took her outstretched hand in both of his and seemed to study it, wordlessly tracing his fingers all along its edges and outlines in a focused sort of way, as if he were working on some great art project of the century. Juliet held still, benignly allowing him to do so, while Mercutio paused in bafflement.

“You,” Benvolio declared after a moment, looking up at her again with wide eyes. “I like you. What’s your name?”

A small smile played over the Capulet girl’s lips as she recieved her hand back once more. “I’m Juliet,” she replied. “I’m very pleased to hear that you like me.”

Feeling a bit useless just standing in the doorway (and realizing that leaving the door wide open definitely wasn’t the best idea should anyone else happen to walk by) Mercutio quickly shut it and began feeling around his darkened wall for a light switch. Momentarily his hands located a lamp and he flicked it on, casting the room in a warm yellow glow; Benvolio narrowed his eyes at the sudden light, his gaze fixed on the blond teen once more. Juliet followed his line of sight. “And what about Mercutio?” she prompted softly. “Do you like him?”

Benvolio tilted his head again, one of his hands absently wandering up towards his face, his thumb forcing it’s way past his unresisting lips and into his mouth. “I think so,” he replied after a moment. “I don’t know him. But I think I like him. He seems nice.”

Mercutio tried to hide the way the child’s words inadvertently stung. “See?” he turned to Juliet, shrugging. “He doesn’t remember me from before.”

Juliet’s fine eyebrows furrowed; she brought her attention back to Benvolio once more. “Benvolio, where are your parents? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

The child stared at the floor, silent and unacknowledging. Mercutio fought the urge to roll his eyes. Ben sometimes still tended to do that when he didn’t want to answer someone; it was as if he thought that if he ignored the question, it would go away on its own. But Juliet was persistent. “Benvolio?”

It took a moment, but finally the child allowed a few words to slip past his lips. “I think…” He blinked down at Mercutio’s carpet, eyes seeming to study the subtle patterns. “Mama and Papa might be away. Don’t remember…. how I got here.”

Well, that explained at least a bit. No wonder Romeo had been so frightened at first; if neither child had any clue where they were or where their parents had gone, it only made sense that they would be frightened. Mercutio pulled out his desk chair and perched himself backwards on it, resting his chin on his folded arms and watching the proceedings before him.

Juliet perched back on her arms, nodding seemingly to herself for a moment before Benvolio deigned to speak again. “But Romeo’s over there,” the child added in his soft voice, pointing towards Mercutio’s bed. “My cousin. He’s sleepy.”

Juliet nodded slowly, pushing herself off the floor and quietly walking over to inspect the sleeping child. Seizing the chance to do something productive, Mercutio seized the bag of clothing and offered it to Benvolio, inquiring if the child needed any help dressing himself; he received merely a solemn shake of the head in response, but he supposed that it was enough.

Juliet stared down at the fair haired boy who’d made himself comfortable of Mercutio’s bed; her hand lingered just above his face, seeming to debate for a moment before gently reaching out and brushing hair from the boy’s eyes. Romeo stirred slightly and Juliet drew back, as if frightened; but she wasn’t able to dart away before the child’s cornflower eyes flickered open and came to rest on her.

For a moment, Romeo was silent; still blinking sleepily, he looked dazed as he stared at Juliet. The girl’s face flushed slightly at having woken him up, and she took a few steps back in case he felt the need to start crying once more. Romeo’s mouth opened and closed a few times of it’s own accord, and Mercutio watched almost in disbelief as an all-too-familiar expression found it’s way on to Romeo’s face. He fought the urge to laugh out loud, instead settling for chuckling softly behind his hand, even needing to do so much as turn away to compose himself. Really, he wasn’t sure why he was even surprised; Romeo had always loved women. In fact...

“I love you,” declared Romeo abruptly, causing Juliet’s face to take on an unmistakable expression of surprise.

“I- oh.” Somewhat flustered now, she seemed torn between whether she should look at Romeo or her hands or even the floor itself; she settled for casting Mercutio a somewhat desperate look, but the blond simply put his hands up and shrugged. The ball was in her court now, and he could do little for her. 

To her credit, Juliet managed to handle it skillfully. “That’s…” Laughing softly to hide her own surprise, she turned back to Romeo with a gentle smile. “That’s sweet of you, thank you. My name is Juliet.”

“I’m Romeo Montag- Monta- Mont- _uh-gru.”_ The boys nose was wrinkled in frustration, but he settled for his own mangled pronunciation of his last name and allowed himself to openly stare up at Juliet with his wide, childish gaze. “Are you here to take me back to my mama now?”

“I…” Juliet pursed her lips at the question. “Romeo, your Mama and Papa left you and Benvolio with us for a little while. They asked Mercutio and I to please take very good care of the two of you. It will only be for a little while- is that alright with you?”

By this point, Benvolio had managed to dress himself quite efficiently; now clothed in a pair of shorts and a light blue t-shirt, he was still staring up at Mercutio with something akin to pride in his eyes at his own accomplishment. Inside Mercutio was panicking- what was he supposed to say? Was he expected to praise him? Should he pat him on the head or would he start crying?

“I guess,” Romeo replied after a short moment of pensivity. “I don’t mind. That’s okay.”

Grateful for the distraction, Mercutio quickly handed the rest of the clothes off to Juliet, who smiled at him before turning to Romeo. “Do you need help getting dressed or can you do it yourself?”

“I can do it myself!” declared the little boy, almost too quickly.

“He needs help,” Mercutio hissed in her ear, fighting the urge to roll his eyes once again. Romeo hadn’t been able to put on his pants by himself until he was six years old, but he was obviously focused on impressing Juliet rather than anything practical at the moment. Typical of his best friend, Mercutio mused- he really didn’t know why he was surprised at this point.

“Right.” Juliet nodded, handing Romeo his shirt for himself and beginning to straighten out the second pair of shorts as Mercutio turned his attention briskly to more important things- namely the fact that Benvolio was now staring up at his very high bookshelf with wide eyes and an unreadable expression on his face.

Maybe he was being overly paranoid, but Mercutio’s mind immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion. “Hey!” he half-yelped, scrambling over to where the little boy stood. “Don’t climb that!”

“I wasn’t,” retorted little-Benvolio, with something akin to annoyance in his quiet voice. His eyes, however, didn’t tear away from Mercutio’s heavily stocked bookshelf, and Mercutio observed him warily as he clenched and unclenched his small hands.

“You like to read too.” 

Mercutio blinked, startled; the fact that Benvolio had spoken unbidden to him was surprising enough on its own, but abruptly the entire reason behind Benvolio’s awe seemed to come together in his head. So he was still a bookworm, even at this age.

“I don’t think you’d like any of these books,” Mercutio replied, his eyes wandering up the shelf as well. Most of them were large books, stuffed fat with empty facts and meaningless words, with untouched pages and flawless spines; their entire lifetime spent filling up space in a teenager’s book case, books on politics and history and science that Mercutio had no interest in. He had glanced at them maybe once or twice before they took their place on his shelf- opinions were all well and good, until they were being shoved down his throat in the guise of “non-fiction”. The only books that were really read through were obvious to pinpoint; their spines were creased from use, their pages dog-eared and crinkled. Mercutio refused to pick up any book that didn’t interest him, but the ones that did he always came back to- over and over again. However, there was next to nothing on this shelf that would be appropriate reading for a little boy; especially considering the fact that most of these books looked as if they could crush the pint sized Benvolio flat if he were given the chance to hold them.

“Mamma reads to me,” Benvolio returned quietly, still seeming awed by the array of books in front of him. “I like the stories- about the gods people.”

“You mean myths?” Mercutio raised and eyebrow, turning to look at the small child with interest. “Zeus, Athena, Poseidon?”

“Yeah…” Benvolio nodded his head. “Mamma reads those to me.”

“I see…” replied Mercutio, studying the boy out of the corner of his eye. He’d never known Benvolio liked Greek mythology; his own copy of some of the more or less infamous stories of Olympus was one of the most worn novels on his shelf. “If you’d like,” he ventured uncertainly, as Benvolio’s hazel orbs slowly turned to look at him, “I guess I could read-”

A sudden banging on the door caused all the occupants of the room to jump; Benvolio let out a sharp gasp and cringed at the loud noise, springing behind Mercutio for protection. Romeo yelped in alarm, falling back upon Mercutio’s bed (he had been trying to show off a super hero move to a very impressed Juliet, though his actions were not quite helping her button his jeans), and Juliet immediately took a step backwards. She realized what was obvious, Mercutio knew; if he was caught with two children and a Capulet in his room, there would be an awful amount of explaining to do.

“Yes?” he called through the still-closed door, his hand moving behind him to pat Benvolio’s back as the child cringed behind his knees. “What is it?”

“Sir, you have a visitor outside who says he wishes to see you immediately,” came the voice of one of the servants from the hallway. “He calls it urgent. I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but he seems agitated.”

Agitated? Mercutio’s brows furrowed, suspicion slowly beginning to string together in his mind, and his took another step towards the door. “Well, who is it then?” he demanded, although he had a sneaking sensation that he already knew the answer.

“It’s Tybalt Capulet, sir,” replied the page, the reason behind his nervousness at last becoming clear; Mercutio and Tybalt were known to have a vitriolic relationship at the best of times, so logically any reason that could bring Tybalt to the palace of Verona demanding to meet with Mercutio could not be good.

However, as Mercutio’s eyes flickered between the two teenagers-turned-tots currently staring at the door with baffled eyes, he was left with little question that this particular situation seemed to defy logic.

There was one thing only that could bring Tybalt there, and that was the fact that Mercutio was currently happened to be in the present company of Juliet. Whether he had come to reclaim her or not was up to Tybalt himself to decide; but Mercutio would greet him, whether as a friend or an enemy.

He raised his eyebrows at Juliet and she nodded immediately, beckoning Benvolio over to her and placing him on the bed next to his cousin. Mercutio ventured over to the door and opened it just enough to slip out into the hallway, regarding the page with calmness.

“The Lord of the Dance requests an audience,” he proclaimed, deliberately slipping his own knife into his belt as the servant watched on silently. “He calls, and I will answer; he canters, then I’ll carry. I’ll greet him now-” He sent the page buy a wry smirk. “It would be rude to turn him away.”


	4. Prince of Fleas

“What lingers at my door? A spectre; a nightmare? Hide your face, Tybalt, your scowl frightens the servants. We’re short enough of staff as it is without your help.”

Tybalt had a truly fantastic eye twitch; Mercutio never failed to be fascinated by it. It was both subtle yet furious, looking almost painful as it stung the Capulet’s not-quite-handsome face. That eye twitch was one of Mercutio’s favorite reasons to mock Tybalt; a reaction, physical, in exchange for friendly or otherwise barbs.

And then there was Tybalt’s scowl. Tybalt’s scowl could wilt flowers. Tybalt’s scowl could make birds drop dead out of the sky. Tybalt’s scowl would make Romeo weep, child or not.

“You know why I’m here.”

“As I’ve said before, Tybalt,” Mercutio drawled on, lounging almost languidly against a tree while Tybalt stood quite awkwardly in the middle of one of the palace’s numerous courtyards. “We have children here. If you continue to wear that expression, I must insist you be sent away.”

Tybalt still looked on the verge of sending a punch his way. Mercutio was counting the seconds until the dark teen’s notoriously explosive temper got the better of him once again; maybe even anticipating it, waiting with bated breath for the inevitable explosion. But it didn’t come. Tybalt somehow managed to keep his temper in check, instead crossing his arms and staring down at Mercutio ( _tall, stupidly tall, he shouldn’t be allowed to be that_ tall) with narrowed eyes.

“ _Where,_ ” he pronounced deliberately, “is _Julie_ t?”

“She’s up with the children,” Mercutio replied innocently, as if he hadn’t known that was the reason for Tybalt coming here all along. “Getting along with them quite well too. She managed to get Benvolio to talk to her, that was a feat, he was honestly starting to frighten me a bit with that eerie silence… and his eyes. His eyes are too big. I don’t like it. They call eyes the windows to the soul, and I’m not sure what type of soul that child has- actually I am, for I’ve known Benvolio for the better part of his life, but that’s besides the point- but I am sure he’s seeing a bit too much into mine!” The blond tilted his head. “You know, he almost looks more frightening than you!” As Tybalt’s infamous eye twitch came around again, Mercutio snickered at the gesture that was more encouragement to him than anything else. “My god, I would have hated to have seen you as a child.”

Any minute now, the blow would come… but much to Mercutio’s surprise, Tybalt backed off. He still glowered, but he was no longer in Mercutio’s face, and the golden haired teen could breathe easy again. “You know,” Tybalt commented wryly, “it was running your idiotic mouth that got you into this situation in the first place.”

“Oh? So you believe me now?”

“No,” shot back Tybalt shortly. “I believe Juliet, and the fact that she hasn’t come running out of this palace yet and you are not currently sporting a black eye leads me to believe that there must be some truth to your statements, otherwise, possessed of good common sense as she is, you would be in pain right now and I would be smug.”

Mercutio raised an eyebrow. “Blunt as ever,” he observed, reaching up and seizing a low-hanging branch with both arms before expertly pulling himself up into the tree. “So then…” He leaned forward, half-hanging off the branch and _finally_ forcing Tybalt to have to look up at him. Victory was sweet. “Why did you really come here, Tybalt?”

The dark haired boy raised an eyebrow, and Mercutio saw leave to continue. “I had assumed it was to fight me- in fact, I was prepared for it. If not that, then to certainly drag Juliet home yourself and away from my defrauding presence. But thus far you have not done any of that. In fact, you have shown a distinct _disinclination_ to fight- that shows character growth, my dear Tybbie, I’m quite proud of you- and you’ve actually left me beginning to question your motives. Smoothly played, good Capulet. So, I ask you now…” Having hoisted himself once again to a higher branch, Mercutio now loped his legs around it and hung upside down, his face directly in front of Tybalt’s. “Why are you here?”

Tybalt blinked. “Is it too much to suppose that I’m interested?”

“You’re not interested. You see, Tybalt, you are one of those marvellous people, I know them well, who never does anything without having some greater reason behind it first. Your every move is measured; you live a life of _purpose,_ dull as that may sound. I know this because I am exactly the opposite- I need absolutely no reason to do anything, and most of the time I don’t know why I do what I do in the first place.”

“Escalus, you’re acting like I want to fight you.” Tybalt looked pained; he would also no longer meet Mercutio’s eye, either as a result of his words or from the unnerving fact that Mercutio was still hanging upside down; either way, Mercutio was getting under his skin.

“You do,” he stated flatly. “You always do. You’d fight your own reflection if it looked at you funny.”

“I don’t always want to fight you.”

“You do a bad job of showing it, then.” Not bothering to calculate his landing perfectly, Mercutio allowed himself to drop from the tree; perhaps this was a mistake, for instead of the graceful and svelte landing he had been picturing he wound up landing hard on his rear, letting out a pained grunt as he connected with the ground.

Fortunately, Tybalt’s back was still turned; but it was impossible for Mercutio to miss the way his shoulders began heaving slightly, or the hand the other teen suddenly had pressed over his mouth. “Hey- are you _laughing_ at me?”

It took Tybalt a good moment to regain his composure enough to answer; and when he was finally able, turning to Mercutio with a thin smirk, he merely said, “If you don’t wish to be laughed at, stop making a fool of yourself.”

Mercutio fought the urge to groan; this game was growing tiresome quickly. Back and forth, blow for blow, it was all good fun, but it was surely growing exhausting when he had so much else on his mind and now an aching ass to boot. He scowled. “Why are you _here,_ Tybalt?”

“I’m here to _help you_ , stupid,” shot back the Capulet, rolling his eyes; from the way he said it, Mercutio almost wondered if it hadn’t been painfully obvious from the beginning. Tybalt continued: “I can’t return home without Juliet in tow, otherwise my uncle, my aunt, and her nurse will all want to tear me limb from limb- and they’ll gladly split me into thirds to each do it themselves, as well. To avoid a horrible, painful death, I need to return Juliet back- and if solving the predicament caused by your idiocy is the only way to do that, so be it.” He peered at Mercutio thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed, before he added, “Not to mention I’d sooner trust a Montague dog with her than I would you."

Mercutio, still on the ground, straightened his shoulders with all the dignity he could muster, and sighed. “Well,” he remarked, “You’re no flatterer, Tybalt.” (Was he really about to do this? Was he really about to accept help from- no, this wasn’t accepting help. It was admitting that he _couldn’t get rid of him._ ) “Though I suppose if you insist on sticking around, there’s little I can do about it.” Pulling himself off the ground, he pursed his lips as he dusted off his jeans- his best pair too, damn it all- before glancing back up at Tybalt, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Though I hope you’re good with children.”

xXx

The fact that Romeo began bawling the moment he set eyes on Tybalt’s face literally managed to surprise absolutely no one.

Mercutio had called it earlier; in fact, half the reason for introducing him to Romeo before Benvolio was just to see if his previous prediction had been right. As Romeo sprung into Juliet’s arms with a tearful wail, he made no effort to hide the grin on his face. If good old Tybalt was ever good for anything consistently, it was a scare.

Said Capulet now drew back a few steps, his scowl- if possible- only deepening. “Children don’t like me,” he stated, sounding unsurprised… and even a bit distressed. Juliet cast him a sympathetic look over the clinging child’s head, while Mercutio simply clapped him lightly on the shoulder and warned him not to hurt himself with his own face.

Romeo, however, was altogether focused on taking comfort from his lady to pay any more attention to the intimidating spectre behind her; quite smoothly, he pressed his tear-lined face in between the swells of Juliet’s breasts as his arms wrapped soundly around her middle. Mercutio himself almost felt impressed at the near-effortless cunning of it; Juliet hadn’t even noticed, doing her best as she was to quiet the child’s crying, and despite his trembling shoulders Mercutio suspected Romeo was feeling quite pleased with himself indeed.

Tybalt, expectedly, was less pleased. “He’s five years old!” Mercutio yelped, hastily jumping in between his unsuspecting child-best friend and the Capulet scion’s mounting rage as Tybalt’s hand lingered over his knife. “You can not stab a five year old! Tybalt, heel! _Heel!_ ”

Watching all of these proceedings from his comfortable place under the bed was Benvolio. He wasn’t sure how long he had been under there, but he got the feeling it had been quite a long time, although even so he still felt disinclined to come out anytime soon. No one had noticed him there. He wondered if anybody would.

It actually took quite a while for things to regain order again- once Romeo had gotten his face out of Juliet’s breasts, Tybalt had put his knife away, and someone had _finally_ found Benvolio hiding under the bed (it took longer than anyone wanted to admit), the two enchanted Montagues and the three mystified teenagers took the old fashioned method of simply sitting in a circle and swapping ideas back and forth. Ineffective as it was, Mercutio preferred this option a lot more than the one that got blood all over his bedroom, and Juliet really just wanted everyone to stop fighting already, so thus a tentative peace was established between the three parties at large.

The hard part, it was proven, came upon actually deciding what they were going to do next.

"Since it’s clear that Escalus’s tale wasn’t actually skewed- the children are here, now, and I’d recognize a Montague anywhere-”

“Like a bloodhound.”

“Shut up, Mercutio. So since shockingly he’s not lying, the next course of action is obvious. We find the woman and convince her to reverse the spell, as she’s likely the only one who can do it.”

Juliet nibbled on her lip pensively, absently stroking the basking Romeo in her lap as if he were a kitten. She looked dissatisfied with her cousin’s plan, and it showed both on her face and in her words. “But in doing that, we could be putting ourselves into danger as well- and surely one of us following the pattern and getting hexed will do little for anyone. If we could take a safer action, one guaranteed to keep all of us out of harm’s way-”

“Yes, but-” Mercutio crossed his arms, leaning back against his bookshelf. “What safer course could there be?”

Juliet frowned thoughtfully for a few moments, looking just as baffled as the rest of him. “If… we send a messenger…”

“And put someone else in harm’s way? As well as letting another person in on our predicament?”

“The less people who know, the better,” Tybalt agreed. “In fact, it was stupid of Escalus to tell the both of us anything at all.”

“And how concerned you seemed for me earlier!” shot back Mercutio sharply, levelling a fierce glower at the older Capulet’s head. Tybalt’s lips curled into a snarl and he seemed ready to fire something back before his cousin briskly interfered in the argument before it could get itself of the ground.

“If the two of you can’t get along, I’ll take both children and go to see the witch myself!”

This was effective in shutting both boys up soundly. Mercutio leaned back again, this time with an unmistakable air of sulking, and even Tybalt wore a pout on his usually dour face. “Good,” sighed Juliet, and Romeo let out a pleased purr in her lap before promptly adding, “Get along with each other or we’ll both get mad!”

Mercutio didn’t bother to hide the fact that he was rolling his eyes, and Tybalt coughed out something that sounded suspiciously like, “ _brat,_ ” behind his hand. Shooting him another glare, Mercutio forced himself to keep his eyes trained on a much more soothing presence- Benvolio, who now sat curled up in Mercutio’s reading chair with the blond’s heavy leather jacket draped over his shoulders. He held Mercutio’s worn book on Greek mythology in his lap, and seemed utterly disinterested in the proceedings around him. Just watching him, Mercutio felt a sense of calm begin to settle over him, and he was able to return back to the conversation at hand with much less spite than before.

“I think we’re all overlooking the fact that we don’t actually know who this woman is,” he pointed out, earning himself a solemn nod from Romeo, who seemed to be taking this conversation quite seriously indeed.

“I know her, I think,” remarked Juliet. “From the sound of it, she’s one of my mother’s acquaintances- a great aunt, or so I’ve heard. I’ve seen her with my mother, in fact, just recently. I always did think she looked positively batty.”

Tybalt raised his eyebrows, a look of surprise coming over his face. “Great Aunt Agatha? Lady Giovanni?"

“You know her?”

“Briefly,” he shrugged. “As a child my father would sometimes take me up to visit her- she has a large fortune, or so I heard, and bears your mother's maiden name to boot. She always frightened me out of my wits, though, so I was never able to stay there for long… frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did turn out to be a witch.” A memory evidently seemed displeasing to him; he shuddered, a look of distaste crossing his face. “She used to have this old hat…”

“That looked like it was made of bat wings!” exclaimed Mercutio, remembering it well from his short modelling career in the park earlier that day. Tybalt nodded, another shudder coursing through him at the mere thought if it.

“Wretched thing.”

“Alright then!” Juliet clapped her hands together, sounding much more enthusiastic than she had before. Mercutio had to agree that he even shared her sentiments- from the sound of things, they were actually getting somewhere in solving this predicament. “So all we have to do is find Aunt Agatha and politely ask her to reverse the curse! It should be easy!”

“Or not,” interjected Mercutio, his voice falling flat once more. “Tybalt’s afraid of her, and she’s more likely to kill me on sight than sit down to tea and listen to my peace proposals.”

“Absolutely not,” cut in Tybalt, his words hard again as well. “No way is Juliet going in to a witch’s house alone.” A second later, his nose crinkled in confusion. “And I am not _afraid_ of her! I’m afraid of her hat!”

“Still afraid.”

“I am not!"

“It’s alright, poor Tybalt, we’re not going to make you go into the big bad house to see the big bad witch. Knowing you, good Prince, you’d be more likely to get yourself turned into a cat anyway, and leave us with even bigger problems on our hands…”

“As opposed to you turning yourself into what, a flea?”

Romeo tilted his head up at Juliet, raising his eyebrows. The dark haired girl simply sighed, looking as if she were bordering on snapping from frustration herself. “It isn’t fair,” she murmured to the little boy. “I’m the only one… the only one here with any sense… the only one here acting like an adult…”

Romeo, being in fact quite a precocious (as well as lovestruck) young child, could not stand to see his beloved lady suffering at the hands of a scary older man and another man he had by now deemed to be a bit of an idiot. Face setting in determination, the little boy pushed himself out of Juliet’s lap and moved to stand in between the two teenagers, who were steadily getting closer and closer to each other in their heated bickering.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, his voice so sharp that it caused both hotblooded arguers to look up at him at once, falling silent immediately. A smirk crossing his lips at his own efficiency, he nonetheless crossed his arms and said quite sternly, “Yelling isn’t going to help figure out your problem. If you want to be smart, then that’s good. But you’re making Juliet sad, and she’s more smart than both of you. So be quiet now or else I’m going to get mad!” Glancing around at the faces he’d stunned into silence around the room, he couldn’t help but feel quite proud of himself. “Right, Benvolio?” he asked, his eyes landing on his younger cousin, half buried in leather and book.”

“Right,” added the smaller child without even bothering to glance up from what he was reading.

“So be quiet now.” With this last statement and a nod that said he was quite satisfied with himself, Romeo triumphantly returned to his place at Juliet’s side. Even the girl herself looked openly shocked; none the moreso, however, than the two teenage boys who were now looking quite humbled as they sat back, hands folded meekly in their laps. Slowly a grin spread across Juliet’s face.

“Oh, Romeo!” she exclaimed before planting a quick affectionate kiss on the younger boy’s nose. “You were spectacular, thank you!”

Romeo didn’t actually know the meaning of the word “spectacular,” but that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm whatsoever as he quickly darted behind Juliet’s back, out of her line of sight, before proceeding to do quite a complicated series of silent whoops, fistpumps, and cartwheels that were really quite pitiful indeed.

Mercutio had the good grace not to comment on this sight- or anything else, for that matter. “My lady,” he sighed, gesturing to Juliet. “The stage is yours. What shall we do?”

“Right.” Juliet smiled, sitting up straighter. “I think we-”

Just then, she was interrupted by the dull buzzing hum coming from directly beside her. Frowning, she picked up her phone and her eyes widened slightly at the sight before her. “Ohhh no,” she sighed, wincing slightly. “Nurse is going crazy. She’s called me six times- and even texted me, and she never texts if she can help it.”

Although he was certain he’d heard the knowledge dropped in conversation before, Mercutio still couldn’t quite restrain himself from commenting. “You have a nurse?” he questioned, snickering slightly. “How old _are_ you?”

“Fifteen,” shot back Juliet before, with amazing synchronicity that was actually kind of intimidating, both Capulets briskly retorted, _“Shut up.”_

Suddenly, an idea seemed to strike the dark-haired Capulet girl; her head tilting back, her eyes seemed to light up with fresh enthusiasm. “Wait- Nurse! That’s it! Oh, it’s genius, it’s perfect!” She lightly slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand, briskly dialling a number into her phone. “Why didn’t I think of it before?”

Mercutio cocked his head, exchanging a glance with Tybalt; he seemed just as baffled, even if he was being more quiet about it since the entire “being-scolded-by-a-five-year-old-(Montague)” incident. “Sorry,” Mercutio raised his hand slightly, “but what are we doing?”

Juliet turned her gaze on him as she held the phone to her ear, grinning triumphantly. “We’re going to _call my nurse!”_ she exclaimed, beaming as if she had just found the secret key to unlock the universe.

Dimly, Mercutio wondered if maybe he had been wrong about deeming her the sensible Capulet. The idea of simply sacrificing Tybalt to the witch was growing more and more appealing by the hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to get this one out!


	5. Recognition

In less than an hour, utilizing the full extent of Juliet’s supremely impressive organizational skills and the efforts (and baffled complaints) of a very loyal nurse, the plan that the three teenagers had christened _Operation: Nurse_ \- Tybalt’s idea, to the shock of absolutely everyone- was go.

Skeptical as Mercutio was about the whole plot, as well as the competency of the aging woman whose contact photo could be seen on Juliet’s screen as she spoke careful instructions into the phone, he was willing to go along with it for the sole reason that it was the only plan anyone seemed to have, and the one most likely to be effective- that is, if tracking down the witch and simply _asking her nicely_ to reverse the spell over the young blood of house Montague was really the answer to their predicament.

The plan, as Juliet and Tybalt had near-effortlessly managed to lay out together (the two Capulets, as Mercutio discovered, seemed to have a near-uncanny ability to bounce off of one each other in the building of a plan- together, they were able to construct a decent attack stratagem in a quarter of the time it would take Mercutio to build up one), was a simple one, if a bit risky. The nurse was to be armed with her purse, in which her cell phone was to be turned on and recording the conversation over a videolink for the hidden conveniency of the teens at the other end. She would call upon the old woman on behalf of the house of Capulet, and consequently would then of course be invited inside. Once into the house, it would be the nurse’s job to broach the subject of “hearing about something scandalous happening to the Montague boys” (the nurse, at this point, had been given the bare minimum of details by Juliet as to Romeo and Benvolio’s condition). If the witch showed any signs she knew what the nurse was broaching, or should she even confess, then the nurse would try and get her to call the curse off- even, should it come to such a thing, allowing the listeners on the other end of the line to speak for themselves. All in all, despite relying very heavily upon the improvisational skills of the nurse, which Juliet had assured them confidently were up to par, it seemed like a solid plan.

But, just like with every single solid plan in existence which seems like it’s going to work and then invariably is hit by a strike of ironic misfortune at the last second… there was a slight hitch. It came when, just a few short moments before the nurse was due to call on old Agatha, Juliet attempted to set up the video connection.

“She… she’s not answering the phone,” Juliet remarked flatly, holding the phone away from her ear and staring down at it in vague surprise. “You know, it occurs to me now that she might not know how to use the video call feature… or almost anything else on her phone.”

Tybalt pressed the heels of his palms into his forehead while Mercutio flopped back on his bed with a groan. “You didn’t think of this before a large part of our plan relief on your nurse being able to use her cell phone efficiently?”

“It’s not my fault she doesn’t know how technology works!” retorted Juliet sharply, handing off her cell phone to an attentive Romeo who stood doggedly at her side. A slight frown settled over her face, but she pushed back her worries determinedly. “But this is alright. The video link was only so we could hear the conversation at all. This is unfortunate, but it doesn’t otherwise affect our plan. Nurse will just have to go into this alone; I have little doubt she’ll be able to manage just fine.”

Blinking several times at Juliet’s resolute smile, Mercutio felt a wry sort of admiration for the girl set in mixed with his own worry. “Your complete confidence in your caretaker’s competence is concerning.”

“I’m confident!” spoke up Romeo, hopping in place a bit as he spoke. “Any plan Juliet thinks of has to be perfect just like her!”

Once again, it was up to Mercutio to jump in and restrain an increasingly incensed Tybalt. “Why you-”

“You know Tybalt, I’m getting really alarmed by your zeal for attacking five year olds with knives!” Mercutio exclaimed, somewhat alarmed, as Romeo triumphantly took his refuge behind a distracted Juliet’s legs and stuck his tongue out at the older Capulet. A low snarl escaped Tybalt’s throat, and in that moment Mercutio couldn’t help but think that he reminded him more of a King of Wolves than a Prince of Cats. “Calm yourself, maniac, if you scare Benvolio he won’t want to come out from under the bed again!”

At last, Tybalt seemed to grow slack in his arms, either from realizing that murdering an albeit bewitched five year old carries a heady sentence in any town, not just Verona, or the realisation that Benvolio under the bed again meant that someone would need to pry Benvolio _out_ from under the bed again, and that someone would likely wind up being him. Mumbling something incoherently that sounded very close to _“I hate life,”_ Tybalt flopped back onto Mercutio’s bed again.

Romeo, however, was blinking at the two older boys in bafflement; Mercutio, the first one to notice this fact, turned to the younger boy with a questioning- and somewhat anxious expression. “What?”

“Didn’t you notice?” asked Romeo blankly, tilting his head innocently to the side. “Benvolio left a little while ago.”

If ever there were a statement able to sent a cold jolt of pure terror through every occupant of one room all in a single instant, Romeo had hit it on the head. Mercutio went eerily still; Tybalt sat up abruptly, his dark eyes taking on a look of glazed panic; Juliet’s head slowly turned towards Romeo, her expression desperately uncomprehending.

_“What?”_

xXx

_Damn Benvolio,_ Mercutio thought darkly, striding through the palace halls fast enough that to any passerby, he realized it would probably seem like he was running. The desperation he was feeling at that moment indeed seemed to urge him not to just run, but to tear through the palace in it’s entirety, every room, every last crack and crevice, for the little boy who had somehow managed to slip away unnoticed while a plan was being set up with Juliet’s nurse. _Damn him, damn his silence, damn his evident lack of communication skills at such a young age. Damn everything about the boy and more._

As soon as news of Benvolio’s absence had reached the group, they had promptly (after a brief moment of panic on all sides) deigned it wisest to split up in order to search the palace grounds. Juliet, thinking that the most likely place for a child to be would perhaps be the bathrooms, chose to go there first; Tybalt was to search the courtyard outside; and Mercutio himself headed down to the kitchens. Of course, he hadn’t been met with any luck finding Benvolio there; he hadn’t expected he would. When Benvolio didn’t want to be found, as he had learned many years ago, you did not find him.

Benvolio, Benvolio, Benvolio, who was always so careful not to cause trouble for anyone, was now on the verge of giving him a heart attack. If something happened to the little boy there was no denying that it would be Mercutio’s fault; he had been the one who’d gotten his friends hexed in the first place, and he’d then been tasked with keeping the children safe and hadn’t even been able to do that. Should some awful fate befall Benvolio due to his own negligence, Mercutio somehow doubted he would ever be able to forgive himself.

Mercutio dimly realized that in his mess of thoughts he’d gotten so distracted that he had missed the corridor to the dining area entirely. He was now at the far end of the hall, near a door beyond which he knew to be Prince Escalus’s own immense private library. His uncle took great pride in his collection of literature, but the thought of books now only brought to mind the image of little Benvolio, his dark bangs falling in his eyes as he hunched over Mercutio’s book of Greek myths.

His mind was not entirely in accord with his own body as Mercutio allowed his feet to lead him forward, into Escalus’s library. The door, he noticed for the first time, was slightly ajar; that was strange, because his uncle always kept the door shut.

The sound of soft breathing caught his attention first; it seemed to echo all around him in the immense library, and Mercutio was immediately alert at the realization that he was not alone. His eyes scanned the shelves lined along the walls, books upon books towering high above his head; but books could not draw breath and had no eyes to watch him with. Mercutio turned towards the prince’s own leather chair, set in the middle of the room with a blanket draped over it for optimal comfort.

Were it not for the bare foot sticking out from under the blanket, he would not have realized anyone was there at all; the figure itself was so small, he would have been easy to miss. Heaving a sigh that he couldn’t decide had it’s origins on relief or exasperation, Mercutio slowly approached the chair and lifted a corner of the blanket up. He was met with exactly what he had expected; the sight of small Benvolio, head resting against his own shoulder and face slack and peaceful. The child’s breathing was steady and even; a heavy book was balanced in his lap, looking precariously close to sliding over the edge of the chair.

Mercutio sighed and shook his head, mumbling under his breath about how some people never changed. Why he hadn’t thought to look here first for the boy, he had no clue; he was still Benvolio, after all.

For a moment, Mercutio was torn between whether or not he should rouse the boy; Benvolio had a history of being a very deep sleeper, but if he woke up to find himself being held in the arms of a person who was still all but a stranger to him, Mercutio could nearly imagine Benvolio’s reaction as being similar to Romeo’s crying fits.

With caution, Mercutio placed a hand on Benvolio’s shoulder and tried to shake him awake; the boy’s head lolled, but his eyes refused to open. Heaving a sigh that bordered upon affectionate, finally the prince’s nephew chose to put aside his doubts and gently scooped the little boy up into his arms.

Benvolio was smaller than he’d expected, and warmer as well; it was almost like cradling a puppy in his arms, and for a moment Mercutio was so stunned by just how fragile the boy felt that he could not bring himself to take a step. In his moment of hesitation, he was even further stunned- almost to the point of letting out an alarmed squeak, which he thankfully restrained- when Benvolio leaned up and sleepily wrapped his arms around the much older boy’s neck.

“B-Benvolio?” Mercutio stammered, and the boy in his arms stirred slightly.

“I feel…” Benvolio’s voice was faint, slurred, bordering on the cusp between wakefulness and sleep, but he was near enough to his ear that Mercutio could make it out all the same. “Like I have been here… before… you. _Mercutio…”_

“Benvolio…” It was the first sign all day that Benvolio recognized him; Mercutio latched on to the sound of his own name with an almost selfish sort of raw hope. “It’s me. I’m here.”

“Here…” echoed Benvolio, his voice soft. His head weighed gently on Mercutio’s shoulder, and he felt the soft breath of the child’s sigh. “Know you now… ‘M tired, ‘Cutio,” he muttered. “Be here… when I… wake up?”

Benvolio recognized him, Mercutio realized with a leap of his heart. Even if it were faint, even if it were only for a sliver of a moment with the other boy half-asleep, at this second Mercutio could only be talking to _his_ Benvolio.

“I’ll be here,” he swore softly, bouncing the sleeping child in his arms. “I promise I will, Ben. We’re going to figure this out together.”

There was no reply from the little boy; Benvolio had slipped away from him once more, and Mercutio felt himself swallow a lump in his throat. Benvolio… the Benvolio he knew… it just wasn’t fair that he should be suffering right now for Mercutio’s own mistakes.

Carefully, Mercutio readjusted the blanket on his uncle’s chair, strode out of the library, and shut the door firmly behind him. Benvolio did not stir in his arms even as he carried him back to his own room once more and laid him down on the bed. When the two got there, the room was as empty as Mercutio had expected; sitting down at the foot of the bed, he glanced around his own bedroom and felt himself frown slightly. Benvolio had commented, once, that Mercutio’s bedroom hardly looked lived in; Mercutio had replied then that it was because he had so little use for it but he remembered how, after that simple comment, he had suddenly found himself thinking about the usage of his room- as well as the reasons he may or may not want to stay there during the day and at night- a lot more.

Benvolio had always been there, to make Mercutio think about the things he didn’t want to think about; he tempered him, scolded him, reminded him. He was both playful and serious, and he was one of the two people Mercutio could safely call his best friends.

Benvolio needed his help, now, and so did Romeo; may he be damned, Mercutio thought, if he did not do everything in his power to help his friends.

Juliet, with Romeo as her seemingly ever-present shadow in tow, returned to the room a few minutes later; the drawn look on her face vanished instantly when she caught sight of Benvolio sleeping soundly on the bed. “Oh, you found him! Thank god- I searched everywhere I could think, and almost got lost more times than I could count. This palace is a maze!”

“He was in the library,” provided Mercutio, his voice uncharacteristically flat. Juliet seemed to notice; she tilted her head, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, but she did little more than that.

“We must tell Tybalt,” she remarked, her phone in her hands as quick as the wind, fingers flying as she typed out a message to her cousin and clicked send. Mercutio still did not speak, too consumed by his own musings; after a moment, he heard Juliet’s voice speak up again. “How odd.”

“What?” he asked, looking up once more. A pensive frown was scrawled across the girl’s delicate features.

“Tybalt hasn’t texted back. Tybalt always texts back immediately.”

Mercutio shrugged. “Maybe he’s distracted. Or he could just be lazy- one never knows for sure, with him.”

Juliet still shook her head. “No,” she replied quietly. “It’s out of character for him not to answer me. Something might be wrong.”

“What could be wrong?” asked Romeo, immediately moving to follow her as the girl promptly strode out of Mercutio’s room once more. Said owner of room let out a squawk of surprise at suddenly being abandoned once more; despite a hunt for Tybalt seeming remarkably unappealing to him out of all the things they could possible be doing, he followed the Capulet girl out of the room anyway sheerly out of not wanting to be left behind.

“Yes, what?” he asked, keeping pace with Juliet’s brisk pace. “He’s probably just being strange, or distracted, as it goes. You know how Tybalt can be.”

“But he never goes without answering,” Juliet returned, still clutching her phone in her hand and glancing down at it every so often with a bemused expression. “It’s too strange for him. Where did he say he was going again?”

“The courtyard- here.” Mercutio steered the girl over to one of the large windows lining the hallway, through which the whole of the courtyard was almost entirely visible below them. “If he’s not down there, I don’t know where he’d be.”

For a second there was silence as three sets of eyes scanned the courtyard below them, searching for any sign of their now lost companion. Even Mercutio, who on a good day would have been delighted by Tybalt’s departure, couldn’t help but feel a bit alarmed when he realized that if Tybalt wasn’t where he said he was and wasn’t texting back, something really _could_ be wrong- perhaps he’d lost his temper on one of the servants, and had been forcibly escorted out. Or perhaps he’d managed to get lost in the garden and was now stuck up a tree, waiting for someone to rescue him- someone who would certainly not be Mercutio, at least if he had any say in the matter.

The buzz of Juliet’s phone caused both teens to jump, and Juliet was quick to snap it open and press it to her ear. “Yes, hello- oh, Nurse!” Her face lighting up, she moved away from the window slightly while Mercutio, his attention aroused, crossed his arms and turned to look at her. 

“Did you- ah, yes- no, they’re still- wait- you mean-” The girl’s dark eyes suddenly seemed to grow larger, and Mercutio felt a familiar sense of dread stirring in his stomach. That was not a good expression. That expression didn’t mean that the witch had been good enough to offer the nurse tea and cupcakes, it meant that the witch had said or done something _bad_.

“Oh, no. That… that isn’t possible. I…” She trailed off as the voice on the other line spoke again; and then slowly, with knitted brows and a strained expression on her face, Juliet suddenly placed her cell phone on speaker and held it out for Mercutio to hear. “Nurse, could you say that again?”

As Mercutio leaned forward, the voice of the Nurse sounded clearly over the other end. “I’ve repeated myself twice now, lady,” sighed the older woman, sounding slightly irritated- but the clearly troubled tone in her voice could not be masked by any means. “It’s as I’ve told you- I spoke to your great aunt, and she told me exactly what she believes happened, if you yourself believe it.”

“But what you mean to say-” prompted Juliet.

“Is that Lady Agatha claims she was not responsible for casting this ‘spell’ of yours,” finished the nurse grimly. “Only one person could she think of with both the power and the motive to do something like that to the Montague boys… a person she claims she has been, for the past years, helping to learn the craft.”

Mercutio wasn’t even sure what drew his rapt attention away from the phone; perhaps, he would muse later, it was traces of magic lingering in the air. But for some undefined reason, his eyes were drawn out the window once more; and in an instant, they landed on the one he had been searching for.

“Oh god,” he breathed, and without stopping to hear the rest of the Nurse’s sentence he took off towards the prone figure of Tybalt Capulet lying outside in the center of the courtyard. His ears only just caught the last echo of what the Nurse spoke before he vanished around the corner…

“And that person can only be the Lady Capulet herself.”


	6. Curses and Kitties

Normally Mercutio got a thrill out of running, whatever the circumstances; be he pursued by laughing friends, irritated uncles, or violent brawlers, whenever he ran he felt invincible. But the feeling of flight was not in his legs that day, and as he sprinted full speed out into the courtyard towards the spot where he had seen Tybalt lying, he felt as if his legs were pulled down by weights. He could not possibly run fast enough.

At last, after what felt like an agonizing number of hours, he drew towards the collapsed boy’s side; Tybalt seemed to have fallen at the base of an old willow tree, crumpled facedown and curled in on himself like some sort of mockery of a ragdoll. He was not entirely still, Mercutio realized now, nor was he unconscious; on the ground, Tybalt’s face was twisted in pain, his eyes darting back and forth frantically as if he were in the throes of some horrible seizure. His lanky figure was rigid, his arms folded and hands clenched around fistfuls of grass. Every so often, a tremble would quake through his form, and Mercutio would hear a low keen emit from Tybalt’s throat, a desperate sound that was half whine and half gurgle.

It was horrible. Mercutio had never seen anything like it; he had never been so frightened in his life.

“Ty- Tybalt.” Slowly crouching down next to the agonized boy, Mercutio placed a tentative hand on his back; almost immediately Tybalt’s body contracted again and Mercutio recoiled, inhaling a sharp breath. He felt helpless; the boy in front of him was suffering and he didn’t know what he could possibly do to help him.

He couldn’t do anything, he realized dimly as he sat back in his crouch and continued to stare in horror at the boy. He had no way of helping- or doing anything.

“Mercutio! Tybalt!” It was the voice of Juliet from a distance behind him that caused Mercutio to tear his eyes away from the frightful sight of the Capulet boy; instinctively he raised a hand, to stop Juliet in her tracks before she could get any closer. Romeo would be sure to become frightened by whatever this was; and seeing her cousin in such a state was not something that Juliet needed to endure.

“What’s happened?” He caught an edge of frustration in her tone, mixed in with the same helpless worry that seemed to consume him. Mercutio could only shake his head in disbelief, refusing to look away from Tybalt for even another moment.

“He seems to have just collapsed… I don’t know what’s wrong with him. There isn’t anything I can...”

There was a heavy moment of silence after Mercutio’s words trailed off; the blond was hardly surprised when, a moment later, he saw Juliet slip past him. Gently, she crouched at her fallen cousin’s side; her deft fingers smoothed Tybalt’s hair from his sweat-slickened face with an ease Mercutio was not able to manage. Mercutio could hear her voice carry through the wind as she softly murmured to her cousin, level and soothing words in a tone that reminded Mercutio of one a mother might employ when comforting a sick child.

“This will pass,” he could make out Juliet saying, allowing Tybalt to grip her hand tightly in the throes of… whatever this was that seemed to be near paralyzing him. “I promise it shall. Tybalt… oh, dear cousin.” Her lower lip was trembling violently, but her face was set firmly as she turned to Mercutio. “Can’t we do anything for him?”

The prince’s nephew shrugged helplessly. “I’m not sure what there is to do. He wouldn’t even let me touch him before you came.”

“Well,” Juliet’s lips pursed, “in that case, at least he’s still in his right mind.”

“I-is the man gonna be alright?” Romeo, who had lingered back after Juliet had rushed forward, spoke up for the first time; glancing back to him Mercutio found the child lingering behind a tree some ways back, his cherubic face stricken with fear as he watched the trembling teenager. His eyes seemed to glisten ominously, indicative of what could be another crying fit anytime soon. “He didn’t get hurt, did he?”

“Romeo…” Mercutio pushed himself to stand, walking over to the little boy. Almost without thinking Romeo threw his arms around Mercutio’s leg, pressing himself against Mercutio’s thigh. Mercutio let out a sigh; the boy was obviously scared, and instinctively he found himself reaching down to draw the small boy into his arms, hoisting him up on his shoulder and allowing the child to hide his face against his shoulder and weep quietly.

He could remember a situation like this before; a crying Romeo, Mercutio filling the unlikely and somewhat foreign role of comforter. But at that time the situation had been much less dire; Romeo had been crying over the loss of a girl he’d been taken with, and Mercutio had found himself torn between empathy and amusement over his friend’s plight. The memory of that time seemed to somehow radiate safety to Mercutio; in all the confusion around him, he seized on to it and held Romeo close, bouncing him in his arms a little as he remembered the grown Montague’s tears from a time that seemed not too long ago.

A sharp, strangled gasp from Juliet drew his attention back to the wicked scene once more; what he saw was almost too much to be believed. Tybalt’s body was steadily curling in on itself, his bones shifting and popping underneath tight flesh. It sounded as painful as it had to have felt, and Juliet fell back with her hands pressed over her mouth as steadily Tybalt seemed to grow smaller and smaller, his shape shifting as bones turned in on themselves. Ears slowly slid up the sides of his head as his face compressed, beginning to grow dark with what could only be fur; his back arched, his hands shrivelled up into delicate paws, and almost as a final touch a tail appeared, curling out from the bottom of Tybalt’s spine. Finally the sickening pops and crunches, the sound of shifting organs, seemed to subside; all that was left was the figure of what was very clearly a cat under a pile of Tybalt’s clothing.

xXx

That Tybalt had passed out from the pain of his transformation was not surprising; unlike Romeo and Benvolio, who seemed to have been given the mercy of a painless transition in sleep, Tybalt had been awake and in agony through all of that. The horror of it was enough to boggle the mind; sympathy was not something Mercutio could readily say that he felt often for the dour Capulet, but Tybalt had even his condolences in such a horrific case.

Juliet cradled the limp body of her cousin in her arms as if holding a babe; she had refused to let go of him even as they walked through the castle, desperately retreating to the safety of Mercutio’s room once more. A pile of Tybalt’s dark clothing lay at her side, and she was whispering softly to the cat in her arms; even from the other side of the room, Mercutio could see that the girl was trembling.

“Are you alright?”

Juliet’s head shot up at him, her eyes wide and somewhat surprised. “I- oh, yes, I’m- I’ll be fine.”

Mercutio sighed, leaning back against his closed door and running a tired hand down his face again; what a day this had been. Romeo, quite shocked from even the little he had seen of Tybalt’s agony (Mercutio’s shoulder had thankfully spared him from the worst of it), now sat on the bed alongside a still-sleeping Benvolio, playing with the corner of a blanket anxiously. “I want to go home now,” he had whispered more than once before they had gotten back to the room, and all Mercutio had been able to do was shush him and promise that soon, soon he would be allowed to see his Mamma and Papa once more.

“This couldn’t have been her,” Juliet spoke up suddenly, her voice steely and sure. The blond glanced up at her, raising his eyebrows, and he was surprised by the resoluteness written on her face. “Not my mother. It isn’t possible. She would never do a thing like this to her own blood.”

“No. Indeed, I don’t believe these two spells-” His tired eyes flickered between Tybalt and the children- “Came from the same caster at all. There is a finesse in the deaging spell that was lacking in Tybalt’s transformation; Tybalt’s curse, as well, seemed designed to cause as much pain as possible, both to the victim and to whomever was watching, so that both spells came from two different sources would not be surprising. However, two witches as one may be just as dangerous; and we could soon find ourselves behex of options.”

“We should have been home right now.” Juliet’s voice trembled slightly once more. “To think that might have happened… in front of my parents. In front of the entire House Capulet.” Inhaling deeply, she drew her furry cousin to her chest. “Oh, _Tybalt…_ ”

“The Prince of Cats, is seems, has indeed now joined his kindred,” Mercutio remarked, but his comment lacked his usual verve. It just didn’t seem right, when Tybalt could quite obviously no longer speak back.

“We can agree, then, that this caster is someone else entirely.”

“Yes,” muttered the prince’s nephew. “If your mother was indeed the first spell caster, then the curse upon Romeo and Benvolio can be placed over her head- in god’s name, how did you not realize your own mother was practicing witchcraft?”

“Do you know everything your uncle does at night?” fired back Juliet, narrowing her eyes at him. Mercutio indeed knew more than he liked, but talking about some of his uncle’s more unusual activities was probably pointless at this point. “According to Lady Agatha, she has been instructing my mother in the craft for going on two years right now, and she has blossomed into a deftly skilled sorceress.”

Biting back the painfully easy comment on Lady Capulet’s already-apparent witchiness, Mercutio crossed his arms. “Which brings us to the second spell caster. Obviously this seems to be an act of revenge; be that as it may, anyone from the house Capulet, or an otherwise neutral house is unlikely.”

“It’s a battle,” Juliet realized, her eyes dulling as the awful truth dawned on her. “Between the two ladies of the house. We’ve managed to get ourselves caught in the middle, us all, and now we’re nothing but pawns in their little chess game.”

“Also, Tybalt is a cat.”

“That he is.”

“Well,” and a humorless, bitter laugh escaped Mercutio’s lips. “What a fine wreck we’ve got ourselves into.”

xXx

Mercutio did not think it was safe for Juliet to be involved any more than she needed to be; as the only daughter of House Capulet, she was a prime target for any spell Lady Montague might send her way. But the girl was determined, especially as the wiry-haired, angry cat in her arms was quite set on not being parted with her for a moment (Mercutio had spent a good fifteen minutes bandaging himself up, once Tybalt had finally awoken from his fitful slumber, after remarking what a fine cat the Capulet made and immediately nearly being clawed to death for his troubles). Romeo, in kind, was eager to stay by Juliet’s side; and Benvolio had managed to latch himself on to Mercutio’s neck, and indeed seemed quite disinclined to be left alone any time soon. So together, the two teenagers, two children, and one surly cat set off to Lady Agatha’s house- as had been requested by the old woman.

Mercutio was more than hesitant about this idea; meeting the old bat from the park again face to face was about as high up on his to-do list for the day as _“Get turned into an angry cat”_ had been on Tybalt’s. But anytime he’d find himself seized by a reluctance that stilled his feet, a glance back at Benvolio’s thin face and wide solemn eyes would remind him exactly why he was doing such a thing in the first place.

“I think that maybe I should do the talking,” remarked Juliet as the motley group halted before what they knew to be the old witch’s door.

“I agree. If my tongue should slip, we could all wind up toads- or worse, and I’d rather not wind up croaking anytime soon.” Hard as it would be, Mercutio vowed he’d manage to keep his mouth shut; if they wanted any chance at reversing any of these spells, they would do well to keep Lady Agatha happy, and she probably wouldn’t be thrilled to see Mercutio as it was.

_‘Not thrilled’,_ as it turned out, was an understatement. The moment Lady Agatha opened the door, her beady eyes fixed onto Mercutio like a hawk latching onto its prey; Mercutio swore he saw his life flash before his eyes, undeniably certain in that moment that he was mere seconds away from spending the rest of his life as a flying squirrel.

Thank goodness for precocious children. “Hello.” Romeo, evidently unperturbed by the woman’s rather frightful exterior, took a step out from behind Juliet’s dress, blinking up at Agatha with childishly wide blue eyes. “You don’t know my mamma, do you? I think we’re going to see her now.”

The old witch’s eyes strayed from Mercutio down to the child; and perhaps the blond troublemaker was losing his mind at last, but he was almost certain that he observed Lady Agatha’s face soften at the sight of Romeo’s innocent exterior.

“You,” she muttered, in a voice that sounded like sandpaper and the crackling of dried leaves in the autumn. Romeo didn’t flinch even as a gnarled finger reached out to trace his face, tilting his head up and cupping his chin. Mercutio couldn’t help but feel impressed by the young boy’s audacity; even he might have started crying at such an action, but Romeo remained still. “You seem to be in a bit of trouble this day, young man,” the witch observed, and Romeo blinked back at her.

“I just want to find my parents,” he confided. “I’m pretty sure I’m not in any trouble, though…” Sudden concern striking him, he glanced back earnestly at his two unbewitched companions. “Right?”

“What’s the child’s name?” Lady Agatha demanded in a sharp voice, eyes settling only on Juliet and causing the girl to straighten suddenly at the unexpected address. Though taken by surprise, Juliet was resolute; she cleared her throat, meeting the old woman in the eye as she spoke.

“The name of the boy before you is Romeo Montague, of the house Montague. To the right, hoist upon my companion’s shoulder, is his blood cousin Benvolio Montague. Both have fallen the victim, it seems, to a wretched spell.” The cat nestled in her arms bristled, and she absently ran a hand down its spine. “And in my arms is my own cousin, Tybalt; yet another victim of a curse we seem unable to combat. I am Juliet, only daughter of Lord and your niece Lady Capulet; Tybalt is her brother Tiberius’s son. And my companion is Mercutio, nephew and successor to Prince Escalus of Verona. We come here, ma’am, for help; we know of nowhere else to turn.”

The old woman regarded the motley group before her for a moment; two teenagers, two toddlers, and a cat, all of whom come to her seeking her help. Her eyes flickered back and forth, glancing over each figure more than once; the midnight black cat was unwilling to meet her gaze, and the child with his arms slung around Mercutio’s neck blinked back at her solemnly, with a depth of expression in his patient childlike stare. Young Romeo still lingered at Juliet’s side, looking more curious about the stranger than anything else, though Juliet still kept a guardian hand on his shoulder even as she held herself straight to meet her own great aunt’s scrutinizing eyes. Mercutio himself was uncharacteristically both solemn and quiet; it was clear on his face that he had much to say about this entire ordeal, and was only stopping himself from doing so likely both from the presence of the two children as well as Lady Agatha’s own. He looked even… penitent, if he were in fact capable of such a thing; now that his own childish deeds from earlier could affect the fate of those he cared about, he seemed to wish he had never been so foolish at all.

And they all came here for the sole purpose of seeking her help to reverse these spells.

“You may come in,” she said at last, opening the door wide enough for the group to slip into her darkened foyer. “However-” Her sharp tone stopped Mercutio alone in his tracks. “I am just as apt to kick you out as to welcome you in, if moved to do so.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Mercutio’s eyes seemed to dance with a stubborn sort of mischief that refused to be extinguished, even in times when it was wholly unneeded. “Then you shall not be moved,” he replied simply, before proceeding after Juliet into the home.

The old woman snorted, shutting the door behind her.

xXx

The tea the woman served was bitter; it tasted as old and stale as everything about the place, and filled with too many unidentifiable herbs that Mercutio could not quite shake the sense in the back of his mind that what he was drinking was more a potion that anything else. Were this entire thing an elaborate vengeful set up, he would not find himself surprised- only the amount of interest the old woman seemed to have in the two bewitched children and the choleric cat served to convince him otherwise.

As soon as they had settled into her parlor, filled with stiff seats and cushions that smelled like must and store-bought linen, she had seated the two children on a small couch and placed Tybalt in between them; the Catpulet still refused to allow himself to be touched by any Montagues, causing Romeo to nearly begin crying over not being allowed to pet what he deemed a “nice kitty”. Juliet handled his foul temper with a patience Mercutio could only marvel at, managing to get him settled down before anything unfortunate could occur; she now listened attentively as the woman before her spoke, her tea cup held over her knee.

“What I sense here is a powerful magic on both ends; particularly virulent, indeed, especially in the case of the cat. One spell is more refined in its execution; this, I believe, bears the mark of Lady Capulet. The other curse is as vicious as magic I have seen only a few times before; I can recognize it yet as Lady Montague’s handiwork. There is little conclusion to be drawn here aside from the fact that these two spells were acts of revenge, doubtless divined of one another and targeting the youth of the house instead of the opposing witch herself.

Mercutio leaned back in his chair, unsurprised to hear his hypothesis confirmed. As much as he’d always thought both women (especially Lady Capulet) held the qualities of witches, the idea that they actually were was nearly overwhelming. Juliet nodded solemnly at the news, however, the turning of cogs in her head visible on her face.

“And to reverse it, and restore our companions to their former selves? How can we do this?”

“It will not be simple,” replied the old woman immediately. “I myself am more powerful than both of them, but a witch cannot singlehandedly undo another witch’s spell. Only the Ladies themselves may agree to lift the curses; to them you must go.”

“Oh,” remarked Juliet, sounding a bit defeated. “That… isn’t good…”

“Indeed, it should not be simple; what is being done here, I can say in my condolences, is wrong. A child should not be forced to pay for their parents own misdeeds; certainly not like this, innocent souls.”

“Why can’t we remember anything?”

The voice that spoke up was so unexpected that all eyes turned to little Benvolio in shock; the child tilted his head, squirming where he sat under the sudden scrutiny. “I remember Mercutio. I can’t remember anything else, but I know I’m forgetting a lot.”

The old witch stared at the boy, eyes narrowed, for a few moments before turning back to the unbewitched teens again. “Once the spells are reversed, I doubt if they should be able to recall anything from this time; the fact that the young one even remembers anything at all is remarkable.” Her eyes flickered to Mercutio, who blinked back inscrutably. “You must mean quite a lot to him, boy.”

Mercutio swallowed thickly as Agatha continued. “However, this flaw does suggest holes in at least one of the spells; holes we may be able to work with. Lady Capulet is a fair witch, talented but flawed. Lady Montague is as reckless as she is unrefined. If you confronted the two witches, perhaps you might be able to convince them to break the spells on their own.”

“Confront them…” Juliet pondered this prospect over her now cold tea. “But wouldn’t that be risky?”

“Very. But if you are brave enough…”

The girl’s dark eyes studies the patterns of the teacup for a long moment before she spoke up again, exchanging a glance with Tybalt. “I believe I could convince my mother to remove her spell upon the two boys. I don’t believe she would harm me.”

Tybalt meowed, sounding (to Mercutio’s ears) as if he were choking on a mouse, and Juliet shook her head. “Not so. I think I would be safe.”

“You can understand him?” cut in Mercutio, raising a disbelieving eyebrow. Juliet shrugged.

“He’s as close as a brother to me. Cat or not, he’s still the same Tybalt.”

“Yes… I suppose there is very _little_ change pres- _ow!_ Mother fu- _agh!_ ”

“You insulted him. That was your fault.”

“I’m bleeding!”

“Quite a lot, apparently. Do try not to stain the cushions.” Juliet turned to her great aunt, purposefully ignoring Mercutio’s pained groaning from the chair next to her. “Lady Agatha, I don’t suppose you have any bandages, do you?”

The old witch hand a hand pressed to her forehead; her left eye twitched violently as she gestured to the cabinet in the back of the room. Juliet thanked her politely, rushing off to gather the needed supplies; in the back of her mind, Agatha wondered if the curses had really changed any of them at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pfft... Catpulets...


	7. Nurses and Clowns

“I still don’t think this is the best idea we’ve had.”

The cat hissed.

“I know you love all my opinions, Tybalt, but in this case I really feel I should say that this just screams ‘bad idea’ all over. With a capital D-E-A, and an added T-H at the end just for dramatic effect.”

“My mother isn’t going to kill you,” shot back Juliet, but the less than certain note in her voice made the statement far from comforting to Mercutio. It seemed, no offense to either Capulet in question, they they both had a very limited understanding of Lady Capulet’s character. Just from what he had observed both at the balls and social conventions of his uncle, as well as in his own experience, Mercutio very much knew that the woman was a snake; they type of woman who could walk into any room knowing she would get what she wanted, who could hatch a plan to murder someone without a hint of remorse and had the discretion to send careful assassins to execute it. The way she clearly threw herself around in public (often in front of her husband, no less) did not help anyone’s perception of her character, though she was just untouchable enough by the general public that she didn’t care. Mercutio knew her type well; she was both clever and dangerous, which was why he would have been far more comfortable going to Lady Montague first.

Lady Montague did not have the same high profile public image as Lady Capulet; in comparison, indeed she was rather gentler in nature. Of the two woman, Mercutio knew her best, and felt most comfortable in her presence; but he knew how formidable a force she could be when reckoned with. The decisions, political and otherwise, in the Montague house were not made by Lord Montague, but by his wife; she was shrewd, and she held a hidden sort of ruthlessness in regards to her enemies. Whereas Lady Capulet was the serpent lurking under the flower of a pretty face and seizing every opportunity to attack, Lady Montague was the viper who would not move unless provoked with a stick or stone- but once struck, her venom could be deadly.

Overall, Mercutio thought, they were the two perfect women to be witches at war; and two of the absolute worst foes the group of teenagers (sort of, at this point) could be up against.

And now as they stood in front of the Capulet mansion, staring up at its towering red-bricked walls and intimidating architecture, Mercutio found that he himself was almost nervous; this plan, for what little there was of it, had every intention of going badly, and save for his uncle’s social nights he knew for a fact that Lady Capulet wasn’t exactly fond of him.

“Perhaps I should wait outside…”

Juliet shot him a sharp look, her dark eyes scathing. “You aren’t scared? Come on- you call yourself a man? I’ve seen children with more bravery in their small toe than you’re demonstrating right now.”

“Right!” piped up Romeo at her side, obviously taking himself to be the child in question.

“Your children were not up against a witch!” Mercutio shot back. “Lady Capulet frightened me _before_ I knew she had the ability to hex me into a tree if I displeased her.”

“My mother is a good woman.”

“Good at many things, true; good at scheming, good at drinking, good at intimidation, seduction, discretion, alarmingly good at cards-”

Tybalt meowed impatiently, and Mercutio recognized this as his cue to shut up. “Right. The cat chases his rat through the gates now; we should follow, and see where it leads us.” He nodded, glancing up at the mansion and resting his hands on his hips in what he hoped was a brave looking gesture, before he followed Tybalt, Juliet, and the two children onto Capulet ground.

Almost immediately Juliet was accosted by her nurse- with an assorted array of cries and exclamations mostly along the lines of _“there you are”, “where have you been”, “what sort of game are you playing”,_ and the quite reasonable _“why are you holding a cat who looks like your cousin and also who are these strange children”._ Juliet evaded her nurse with as much tact as she could, but it was Mercutio who realized that the inclusion of the Nurse would possibly shift two burdens off of their already overloaded plates.

“Good woman,” he remarked, slipping behind the nurse and throwing an arm around her neck. “You are, in fact, just who I had hoped to meet today.”

The aging woman threw off his arm with a snort, casting a warning look to the prince’s nephew over her shoulder. In the back of his mind Mercutio wondered if she might not be a witch as well, but he shook off the thought with a scolding for his paranoia. “Am I now?”

“Indeed; for, you see, a nurse’s job is to take care of children, and a clown’s job is to entertain them; seeing as you have so fortuitously appeared in our lives today, you can now readily serve the purpose of both. Romeo, Benvolio, my dear friends- won’t you make this woman’s eve a bit brighter? I expect it will be the first night she’s spent in the company of a gentleman in a long while, never mind two as handsome as yourselves.”

“Ah- yes!” Juliet exclaimed, her companion’s plan finally occurring to her. “Nurse, if you would look after them, only for a few moments while we go speak to mother-”

“Your mother has isolated herself in her bedchamber, Lady Juliet, plagued by headaches- why does this cat in your arms look so like your cousin? It’s eerie, that’s what it is- why look,his ear is even torn in the same place, and he has a mark just under his eye-” Ignoring the two suddenly mischievous young Montague boys who were now exchanging devilish glances behind the woman’s skirt, the nurse peered closer. “Why, if I didn’t know better myself I’d even say that this was dear Tybalt after a-”

“The children, Nurse!”

“Are about to pull down your skirt,” Mercutio added helpfully, but the Nurse at this point had seemingly decided to ignore him and all comments he made so his remark went unnoticed.

“Mother’s in her bedchamber,” Juliet remarked, more to herself than to anyone else, before seizing Mercutio’s arm and beginning to drag him away. “Thank you, Nurse!” she called over her shoulder, brushing off her caretaker’s inquiries with a wave. Mercutio was just able to hear the old woman’s shriek of abject horror, followed by the sound of tearing fabric and the giggles of two children, before he was dragged into the Capulet mansion.

He had been here before, more than once during his youth and again while accompanying his uncle; but the stiff formality of the place, from its red walls and thick carpeting down to the solemn-eyed portraits of long dead ancestors lining the walls, never failed to give him the urge to tear off his skin. There was something about the Capulets in general, right down to their home, which suggested a cool sort of indifference to anyone who wasn’t them; a self-absorbed aristocracy that refused to change its form in any way, even as new blood moved through the family line. It wasn’t natural; Mercutio despised the environment. Growing up in such a place, he was not surprised Tybalt had turned out the way he did; indeed, he was shocked Juliet had grown up so well.

It was only directly outside her mother’s room that Juliet’s driven charge came to a halt; a look of hesitation crossed over her face, and one hand unconsciously drifted to pat the cat perched on her shoulder. “I’ve… never… interrupted Mother in her rooms before,” she whispered to the cat. “Do you think she’ll be angry with me?”

In reply, Tybalt simply nuzzled her hand; a soft purr into her ear was enough to make her nod, closing her eyes and allowing her cousin’s words (?) to soothe her. “You’re right,” she muttered after a moment, once more placing her hand upon the brass door opener while no longer seeming to harbor the fear that it might bite her. “Mercutio, you ought to stay out here- Tybalt and I will speak to mother.” She raised an eyebrow. “Is that alright with you?”

Mercutio was quick to raise his hands, taking a step away from the door. “Quite. Do go ahead, and try not to get bitten on your way in or out.”

“Mother wouldn’t hurt us,” Juliet reiterated under her breath- this was starting to sound more like a mantra than a definite fact now- and she drew one last deep breath before rapping gently on the door and slipping inside.

Mercutio couldn’t hear the conversation between the Capulets through the closed doorway, and that was more than alright with him. He already knew that they would have no luck with this empty attempt; not with Lady Capulet. To pass the time out in the hall he took to admiring a portrait of a white haired Capulet patriarch with a pair of mutton chops that could have rivalled Mercutio’s own grandfather; the severe expression on his face was easy to imitate, and Mercutio imagined that it made the man look very much like a constipated duck. The scream of anguish from Lady Capulet’s bedroom was hard to miss, but he pretended to have done so all the same; even when this cry was followed up with a wail of, “My nephew! My brother’s child! What have they done to you?”

After this revelation, Mercutio knew, Lady Capulet would want to take revenge, though she could do nothing for her hexed nephew; Juliet would try to stop her, with an undeterminable amount of success, and Tybalt might hiss around a bit until the subject of lifting the Montague curse is finally brought up. Lady Capulet would round on her daughter- fierce, dark eyes burning and blonde hair flying wild and untamed around her uncovered shoulders- as she demands how such a thing could possibly be suggested by her own blood.

“Can’t you see what they’ve done to your cousin?” Mercutio mimicked under his breath in a sultry, high-pitched voice, before rolling his eyes. “As if he wasn’t enough of a feline already, you old minx; trained as a ratcatcher by the best in Verona, no doubt.”

And then, sooner rather than later, the door would open and with a forceful shove-

“We’ve been kicked out,” Juliet stated flatly, the sound of the door slamming shut behind her echoing down the hall.

“Well, that didn’t go as planned,” Mercutio remarked, despite the fact that everything seemed to have gone exactly the way he had anticipated in his own head.

Juliet sighed, running a hand through her dark hair and absently hugging her cousin to her chest. The disappointment on her face was unconcealed; Mercutio almost felt bad for the girl. The realisation that you can do absolutely nothing to pierce the thick and hollow skull of your own parent is a bitter one.

“Well,” he stated with a forced lightness in his tone. “Off to the Montague house- see if we draw our lots better in a home where you can breathe without upsetting the paintings.”


	8. Mirror Mirror

The Montague mansion was much more informal than the Capulets, to be sure- much more homelike, Mercutio fancied, although he imagined that could have something to do with the fact that he’d half grown up there since pre-school. The relaxed environment of the home and servants seemed baffling to Juliet, however; the sole (human) Capulet looked highly uncomfortable and out of place as she was led by Mercutio through the sun-lit hallway towards the Montague parlor where he was certain he would find the lady of the house. Lady Montague liked to catch up on her reading around this time on weekends; Mercutio had faced down her wrath more than once after having accidentally disrupted her peace.

_Lady Montague’s wrath_ \- somehow, after seeing what had happened to Tybalt, that term had taken on an entirely new meaning.

Lady Montague was practically an aunt to him; and Mercutio had never had even a clue that she practiced any form of witchcraft. As far as he knew, Romeo and Benvolio were equally clueless; he could hardly imagine either of his friends having anything to do with such skullduggery in any case, even if they were aware of the Lady of the house’s “hobby”. But just from what had been done to Tybalt it was obvious that she was both very skilled and ruthless in her witchcraft; if she were to turn her hand on them, they might all be in peril.

Then again… to be fair, Lady Montague had never been the best parent, nor the most involved, but surely she would never try to hurt Mercutio. Least of all Romeo… Mercutio’s eyes wandered to the two little boys who, having been reclaimed from the harassed Nurse, now walked side by side between them. Romeo was in bright spirits, obviously recognizing his home, and every so often would stop to greet a passing servant or to point out something in the hallway. Benvolio still kept his hold on Mercutio’s hand tightly; every so often he would turn his round eyes up to him solemnly, as if to say _“This is a bad idea.”_

_By hell, it probably is, Ben,_ thought Mercutio as the little boy’s grip on his hand tightened more and more the closer they got to his aunt’s parlor. _But I’m not eager to spend the rest of my youth babysitting my two best friends, so either we get you turned back now or I go right down there to join you._

Nestled safely in Juliet’s arms, Tybalt was just as on edge as the rest of the group; as they at last drew to a halt outside of the large white oak door, his hair stood on end and a low hiss was emanating from the corner of his mouth. Juliet, pushing her own nerves aside, began to attempt to calm her cousin; Mercutio took the opportunity to boldly rap three times with his fist upon the close door.

A pause. Silence. The teens froze. Were they dead already? And then…

“Come in!”

Mercutio and Juliet exchanged tense glances before the former pushed the door open.

The parlor was sunlight and long, a familiar room decorated with many chairs and sofas; the walls were lined with bookshelves and portraits, aside from the one far left wall which consisted entirely of broad windows looking down upon the streets below from two stories up. In the middle on the room sat Lady Montague herself, her dark hair pinned up on top of her head and her dress draped over her legs and the couch she sat upon. The woman’s eyes, a steely shade of blue, took in the visitors with a bit of bafflement; and they came to settle on Mercutio as he was the first to take a bold step into the room, followed closely at his heels by Benvolio.

“Mercutio? What is the meaning of this?”

“You’ve been up to some mischief, Lady,” observed Mercutio with a humorless smirk. The bemusement of Lady Montague’s face slowly settled into one of cool realization. “You know as well as I what’s been done tonight. We’ve come to change back what has been altered.”

The woman blinked, eyes regarding him coldly. “We?”

“We,” confirmed Mercutio, ushering Benvolio to stand in front of him. At the sight of his mother, Romeo could contain himself no longer; he rushed forward into the room, with a gasp of _“Mamma!”_ only to be swiftly caught by the arm and held back by the prince’s nephew.

Lady Montague stood immediately, pressing her hands to her heart and staring at the boys like she were witnessing something grizzly. “Are these- oh- oh, my boys! My darling children, look what that shrew has done to you!”

“Not just what has been done to them,” Mercutio corrected, “but what has been done upon by you.”

“Whatever retribution received upon the sole of any Capulet was well deserved,” retorted Lady Montague, bending to cup her son’s round face in her hand. Romeo glowed at the contact from his mother, beaming at her, and a flicker of affection passed over the woman’s face just long enough for Mercutio to catch it before it disappeared once again.

“Normally I’d agree with you,” the blond teen agreed, crossing his arms in front of him as he watched the spectacle of the boy being reunited with his mother once more. “But don’t you think turning him into a cat was a bit excessive?”

“Not at all,” replied Lady Montague bluntly.

“So, you won’t turn him back, then?”

“In his dreams. The Capulet nephew will be chasing rats for as long as he lives.”

“And your son will be chasing toy cars and beetles for as long as you do,” Mercutio noted, and to his amusement at this observation Lady Montague was quick to withdraw from little Romeo, straightening up and stubbornly smoothing down her dress. “You are a sensible woman- I know it from years of knowing your son. If you would only reverse your curse, then Lady Capulet could surely be convinced to-”

“Don’t play the fool with me, Mercutio Escalus,” Lady Montague scolded coolly. “If you really think there is a force on earth capable of convincing that bitch to turn my children back-”

“If we could show her her nephew restored-”

“And leave me without my own nephew or son?”

“At least yours are still human!” Mercutio was beginning to lose his temper now; behind the door, he could hear Juliet stirring and hoped she’d have enough sense not to come in. “Tybalt is suffering in his current state; as much as I despise the mouse-wrangler myself, he deserves his humanity as much as any man, and what you are doing is cruel!”

“She is as cruel as I each day of her life,” retorted Lady Montague, striding over to the table alongside the wall and glancing at her own reflection in the mirror for a moment before picking up an ornate little compact mirror, glancing down into it briefly. before snapping it shut “What I have done to her family is short of what she deserves.”

“Doubtlessly,” Mercutio conceded. “But the morality of your own actions-”

“I care not for morality,” Lady Montague scoffed, “when my own blood is acursed!”

Mercutio halted in his words, mind whirring for another course of action; this conversation was proving to be no more successful than confronting Lady Capulet, and Mercutio was beginning to wonder why he’d thought he’d have any luck at all. But if this didn’t work… he couldn’t think of anything else that might stand a chance. If at least one witch didn’t reverse their spell, he knew his friends (and Tybalt) could be looking at a future much transformed.

“I-” He stumbled over his own words, his tongue for once failing him as his own energy depleted. “Please, if you might just…”

“Reverse the curse upon my cousin and Lady Capulet shall do the same.” Juliet’s voice cut in smoothly; Tybalt clutched firmly in her arms, she stepped out from behind the door and revealed herself fully to Lady Montague. Her demeanor was cool and focused, giving off the deliberate impression that she was trying very hard to remain calm; she met the stunned eyes of her mother’s most hated enemy head on, and nodded her head benignly. “This I can promise, or may I not be my mother’s daughter myself.”

“You…” Lady Montague seemed at a loss. “Juliet Capulet…”

“The very one,” Juliet nodded her head. “In my arms is my cousin Tybalt, whose obvious misadventure seems to be the direct cause of your spell. If you would be as good as to take it off…”

Juliet’s words were interrupted by the sudden click as Lady Montague’s compact was snapped open. “You,” she snarled, her voice low and dangerous, “the daughter of Capulet. You come into my house, bring your filth in here, and ask me for favors? Ask me to do you a kindness, after all your family and your cursed mother has done to me? After seeing the fate that has befallen my own kin? And you dare ask me to reverse my own curse?”

“For fairness’ sake,” replied Juliet, not losing her cool even in the face of Lady Montague’s rage. “Yes. All I ask is that-”

“All you ask!” echoed the woman, tossing her dark hair behind her shoulder and glowering down at the girl who suddenly looked very small compared to her. “All you ask! I’ll show you what you ask!”

Before Juliet even had a chance to turn away, the fullness of the compact mirror’s reflection was suddenly trained on her; and with a gasp, before Mercutio’s very eyes, the Capulet girl was swiftly sucked inside of the mirror.

Mercutio let out a cry of alarm, and Tybalt hissed as he landed on his feet. Where Juliet had been seconds before, there was only empty air. The compact snapped shut; Lady Montague stared down at it victoriously, looking almost wickedly delighted with herself.

“This is what comes when the Capulets cross a Montague,” she muttered, eyes flickering after a moment to Mercutio. “This is all that comes of it; war and victory.”

“Let her go!”

“Never!” shot back Lady Montague, clenching the compact in her fist. “For as long as Capulet lives, her daughter will remain inside of my own mirror, and her precious nephew shall spend his days a feline. What a shame.”

“You can’t do this!” Mercutio snarled, taking a step forward; he had no idea what he even hoped to do, but he didn’t really care at this point. Anger and horror were beginning to get the better of him, and though he knew his temper at this moment could be dangerous his only real thought was getting Juliet- his last ally- out the mirror.

Lady Montague, perhaps seeing the dangerous glint in the prince’s nephew’s golden eyes, took a step back. “Mercutio Escalus, you are no more immune to my spells than any Capulet,” she warned. “If you threaten me, I will not hesitate to neutralize what I perceive to be a danger.”

“Let her go,” Mercutio enunciated, “or else I’ll make you.”

Lady Montague looked sober. “Very well then. If that’s the way it’s going to have to be…”

Mercutio’s reflexes were quick, but even he had very little time to react as the witch raised her hand; the bolt of energy sent reeling towards him was dead set on throwing him off his feet, and instinctively he cringed backwards in preparation for the spell to strike him. What happened, however, was a shock to everyone; instead of a spell, it was a body that hit him full force, thrown through the air by the impact of the blow.

Mercutio caught Benvolio in his arms before he could tumble to the ground, and he barely had a second to register what had just happened before he tore out of the room, Tybalt close at his heels and the child cradled in his arms. Lady Montague would not pursue them, he was sure of this; then again, he’d also been sure that Romeo’s mother would not attempt to hex him, and he’d obviously been dead wrong on that count.

Emerging out of the confines of the Montague mansion was a blissful freedom; however, he did not stop running until he was far away from the witch and her castle, concealed well out of harm’s way in the closest place he could think of that might offer safety. He chose the shelter of a grove of trees near the park; it was a place he, Romeo, and Benvolio had come many times before to simply waste time telling stories and occasionally heckling the people passing by. However, there was no one else around the secluded area now- only Mercutio, Tybalt, and the little boy violently trembling in his arms.

Benvolio’s entire body had been seized by an incurable sort of shivering; his eyes were glazed as he stared up at Mercutio, and his fists were wound tightly in the sleeves of Mercutio’s jacket. The teenager felt his throat close up just staring down at his young friend; he couldn’t _understand_ it.

“B-Ben,” he half choked, holding the boy close to his chest. “Why the hell did you do that, you idiot? I could have- I should have taken that myself. You didn’t need to… why did you do that?”

Through chattering teeth, Benvolio smiled wryly. “Y-y-you’re trying t-to break the s-spell, remember? Be a h-hero…”

Benvolio had thrown himself in the path of his aunt’s spell. For Mercutio. It… it didn’t make sense. “But you…” Mercutio whispered, brushing Benvolio’s messy, dark bangs away from his face. The little boy shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut.

“I’m okay…” he murmured, his voice thin and small. “It d-doesn’t… hurt…”

Mercutio didn’t realize he was crying until he saw a tear fall and stain Benvolio’s grey t-shirt; the little boy, feeling it as well, clutched his fingers tightly in his trembling hand.

“Y-you know… Mercutio…” His eyes opened a sliver, and the ghost of a small all too reminiscent of the grown up Benvolio flickered across his pale lips. “I think I remember now…”

“Oh god,” Mercutio rasped out, turning his head away. “God damn you, Benvolio…” He was going to fix this. He needed to. There had to be some way that he could fix this, this entire mess that he knew now wasn’t really his fault but still somehow was all the same. “Just… let me try… I can solve everything…”

“Y-yeah…” Benvolio’s voice was faint; Mercutio could feel the boy’s skin growing cooler, rougher in his arms, but he couldn’t look, didn’t want to look. “Y-y-you can. You’ve always been good… at m-making people mad. I know… _Cutio_ …”

The last shred of Benvolio’s voice faded away, and Mercutio pressed his forehead against the trunk of one of the trees. His shoulders shook silently; fury churned inside of him, at himself and Benvolio and the entire stupid feud that had started this in the first place. Everything had fallen to hell; and why was he the only one left standing? Why couldn’t he think of anything, any single way that he could solve this? Why couldn’t he bring his friends back?

Why had any of this happened in the first place?

He glanced down at Benvolio. He wasn’t surprised to see the pale white marble face, relaxed and at ease, cradled in his arms; Benvolio had literally been turned into a marble statue.

It should have been him, Mercutio thought bitterly as he hugged the little boy to his chest. _It should have been him._


	9. Rage

Mercutio never was the self-pitying type. He had always been able to laugh in the face of self-pity; just the day before, had you asked him he would have eagerly told you that the man who allows his doubts to overwhelm his own sense is on a level worse that a toad, because at least toads can focus for long enough to snag flies with their tongue.

He had never considered just how much it would truly sting- to see your every effort to fix things dashed to the side, to watch everything important falling apart in front of you and not be able to do a thing to help your friends- or yourself. It was not a feeling he was unfamiliar with, but it was one he despised; complete helplessness. And he rebelled against it with every fibre of his being.

He needed to get up. He needed to pull himself off of the ground, stop cradling Benvolio’s stiff little figure in his arms, and actually do something to _fix_ this entire mess because now he was the only one who could. Benvolio, Juliet, Tybalt, Romeo, they hadn’t all been cursed just for Mercutio to sit back and give up. Benvolio had even told him, so easily, that he believed in him; the words had sounded simple coming from the mouth of a child. But try as he might, Mercutio realized that he just couldn’t believe in himself.

Every effort he’d taken up to this point had simply torn things apart even more; the situation kept escalating out of his control, and now he was alone. What more was there to do? What more could he do?

His back pressed against the tree, he cradled Benvolio in his arms and gently stroked his marble-smooth face. The little boy’s eyes, so large and almost eerie in their perceptiveness, had slipped shut; he wore almost a peaceful expression on his face. It was such a familiar look, so fitting of Benvolio as Mercutio knew him; for a few seconds it was almost easy to pretend that Mercutio wasn’t here, wasn’t alone. Instead he and Benvolio were just sitting out in the warm sun, as they had been for most of the day. They had been watching the clouds go by; Benvolio had wound up dozing off, and any second now he would wake up to Mercutio teasing him before they both walked home together…

But that was only a happy fantasy. Benvolio wasn’t really here now; Mercutio was alone.

_“Mrowrr.”_

Well, alone for all that it counted.

“What the hell do you want?” Mercutio snapped, turning a dark glare upon the raggedy feline in front of him. Tybalt’s dark cat eyes narrowed, and he let out a hiss; his words weren’t present, but his meaning was all too clear to a reluctant and emotional Mercutio. _“Get off your ass and fix this,”_ he seemed to say, and the idea that he was now being bossed around not just by a cat but by Tybalt himself was almost so bitterly ridiculous that Mercutio had to snort. _Prince of Cats, indeed. Perhaps you ought to be rechristened King._

“What the hell do you want me to do?” he demanded, a strained- almost manic- smile upon his lips. “What is there to do? Who can I possibly turn to now that both witches refuse to lift their curses? My uncle? What can he do? Juliet’s trapped in a mirror, and I don’t see how she’s getting out anytime soon, Romeo’s left with his mother, Benvolio’s _gone,_ and you’re stuck as a useless-” His words broke off in a strangled yelp as, with a brisk movement, Tybalt swiped his claws along the side of Mercutio’s face. The blond pressed a hand to his scratched cheek, hissing in pain, before he rounded on the cat. “You son of-”

Rising to his feet with not a care for how it might look to anyone passing by, he glowered down at the small feline (now, he noted with a wry sense of victory, he was most certainly taller than Tybalt). “Do you want to fight me?” he demanded, his tone thick with the same fury that clouded his mind. “I’ll have you! Come on then, Tybalt, fight me!” He swung a kick that the cat swiftly evaded.; Mercutio was only riled even more. “Let’s go!”

With a hiss that to any rational mind seemed to scream, _“I am a cat! Why are you trying to fight a cat?”_ Tybalt streaked up the tree and appeared again just over the impassioned prince’s nephew’s head. Furious but now with the scapegoat for his rage well out of reach, Mercutio let out a howl and kicked the tree full on with the toe of his boot. The sharp pain this action sent coursing up his foot caused him to yell again and hop around quite idiotically, a display which Tybalt watched with a droll sort of unsurprise.

“I’ll fight you!” Mercutio continued, seemingly heedless- or simply not caring- that Tybalt had no intention of starting a fight (no matter how confident he was, even in his present state, that he would be able to win) at the moment. “I don’t care if you’re a damned cat, I’ll fight you anyway!”

“Sir.” The sudden voice of a baffled pedestrian had Mercutio freeze in his tracks, and it abruptly occurred to him how utterly _outrageous_ he must look; hopping on one foot, screaming up a tree, threatening to fight a cat. By god, he probably seemed mad; maybe he even was.

The woman blinked at him. “Are you… alright?”

Mercutio’s manic laugh returned, a sound so alarming that the woman actually took a good several steps back. “Of course I’m alright, my dear stranger. I’ve never been better! I’m great! I’m absolutely perfect!” He threw his arms up in the air, hoping- rather halfheartedly- that he might manage to hit Tybalt in doing so. “I’m screaming my lungs out _at a cat, why,_ don’t I look totally, positively _alright?”_

“You are about to fight an angry cat, sir. You look as if you need some help.”

“Use a little bit more of that sense...” Mercutio tapped the side of his head; slowly becoming deflated at the realization that he wasn’t about to wrangle a fight out of Tybalt or the pedestrian, he began to slump against the tree. “And don’t ask stupid questions; you won’t look so foolish all the time.”

Ignoring his comment (quite unfairly, Mercutio might add- as always, he was the pinnacle of wit), the woman took a bold step forward. “Here,” she said quietly, and the teenager opened his eyes in shock to find a warm woolen shawl being wound around his neck.

The woman gave him a soft smile. “The night is supposed to be cold. I can offer you this comfort, at the very least.”

Mercutio blinked in bafflement as the woman stepped back, his hand wandering to feel the shawl around his neck. “I…” Temporarily at a loss for words, he could barely contemplate such a simple act- kindness, for no reason other than to be kind. How spectacular. “Thank you,” he managed to get out, and if his voice trembled slightly on the last word they both pretended not to notice. He gave the woman a nod; a simple, wordless gesture to convey that he would be alright; giving him one last empathetic, slightly worried smile, the lady nodded and went on her way again.

He was going to find that woman after this was all over, Mercutio decided. He’d use the resources of his uncle to track her down; she hadn’t looked wealthy. Surely more money for her family, a good dinner for her children, maybe even giving the parents high-paying jobs somewhere… Mercutio was determined not only to not forget the act of kindness that had been paid to him, but to return it in kind.

The idea that somehow, in some way, this all might eventually come to an end was something he hadn’t dared think about until now; suddenly spurned on by this new idea, finding life in it, he unwound the scarf from around his neck and picked up Benvolio where he was lying on the grass. He entwined the covering carefully around the little’s boy’s frame, wrapping him up comfortably; once he was sure Benvolio was secure, he turned up to Tybalt again. The cat still sat up in the tree, regarding him with sharp eyes.

“For what it’s worth…” Mercutio had never been good at apologizing; he didn’t bother. “I really don’t want to do this alone. There could be better company… but what do you say, Tybalt? Save the world together?”

The cat let out another mewl before easily jumping down from the branch, landing on his feet and shaking himself off before turning to face Mercutio. Of course Tybalt would follow him; as long as Juliet was still trapped by Lady Montague, there was no way her cousin was going anywhere.

“Where are we going?” Mercutio vocalized the question that was on both of their minds; he held Benvolio close to his chest, cradling him like an infant, and gazed thoughtfully down at the stony crown of his head. “Why, that’s simple; we’ve only one place to go, and we’re going to exhaust all our options. Dear Tybalt; I say we pay another visit to your aunt.”

xXx

Lady Agatha did not seem at all please to see them back on her doorstep; but Mercutio noted that she did not look in the least surprised. He would have been more disturbed by this fact had he not remembered his own doubts at their formulated plan from earlier in the day; the old woman took in the motley group of teenager, cat, and statue with her cool eyes before wordlessly inviting them in.

She didn’t speak as Mercutio explained the situation and the encounters with the two witches; indeed, she seemed so focused on her own tea and biscuits that at times Mercutio wondered if she was even listening to him at all. Ultimately, however, the last of his words died away and Agatha straightened her back; turning her gaze up to him, she very calmly asked the question that had been haunting Mercutio’s mind.

“Well? What sort of plan do you have?”

“Plan?” echoed the prince’s nephew with a dry, humorless chuckle. “Exactly none. Formulating plans exhausts me; I haven’t the slightest clue what we plan to do.”

“And you expect to save your friends this way?”

“I don’t know- I’ve always been better at making people angry than fixing things, I suppose. If only saving the day could be as easy as that.”

The old witch made a wry sound of disapproval, while Mercutio couldn’t help thinking back on Benvolio’s final words to him. His mind drifted to earlier in the day, how baffled he’d felt dealing with the two children alone and how Benvolio had immediately offered him help when asked for it. Benvolio had always helped him; he’d even taken the curse in his place. Benvolio would in no way have wasted the last things he would say to Mercutio; he had to have had a reason for saying what he did. _“Break the spell… be a hero… make people mad.”_

What had he been trying to tell him?

It hit Mercutio like a bolt of lightning, and he nearly spilled his tea; Benvolio had been telling him exactly what to do. He was still the only person whose advice Mercutio could genuinely trust, and Benvolio had been giving him the key he needed. With Benvolio’s words as stepping stones, Mercutio found a plan rapidly begin to formulate in his head.

“Actually-” His head shot up, eyes filled with more enthusiasm than they had been all day. “On second thought, I think I might just have a plan after all.”

xXx

Night had fallen hours ago; the streets were long since deserted, the last of its people having fled to their homes from the cold and darkness that set in with the vanishing of the sun. Nighttime on the streets of Verona was reserved for the young and the wild at heart. Mercutio wasn’t sure what time it was by now- probably past midnight, at the very least- but that was one of the last worries on his mind as he sat stiffly upon a park bench, jostling his leg in a tense motion as he sat, and he waited.

His only hope was that both Ladies Montague and Capulet would deign to show up; old Agatha had assured him that they would, but he wasn’t sure just how sound her word was. Luring them out had been simple; sending a letter to each, claiming to be from the opposing witch and inviting them to the park for a showdown. It was the type of offer the two enemies wouldn’t be able to refuse, especially as caught up in their petty bickering as they were; now, all that was left for Mercutio to do was wait to see if they both showed up.

He had a plan; of course he had a plan. Benvolio’s words had sparked a fire in his mind, immediately setting his gears whirring, and the course of action they would take spun together in his head as easily as a spider’s web. The Montague nephew had always been clever; if what they were about to do wound up saving the day, Mercutio reminded himself to tell Benvolio just how fantastic he was, since he certainly didn’t hear it enough.

Mercutio’s hands were trembling. The teenager swallowed thickly, shoving them inside of his jacket pockets. He found himself glad that the only outward sign of his nervousness was one so easy to hide.

Was he nervous? Of course he was. If he was being honest with himself, Mercutio was terrified. If this plan went wrong, it wouldn’t just be the end of him; but the end of Tybalt, Benvolio, Juliet, and Romeo as well. Not to mention all the chaos the two witches might cause if they were left unchecked; why, it could be the end of the entirety of both houses Montague and Capulet- maybe even the downfall of Verona itself.

If Mercutio failed, it was all over. Which was why he simply _couldn’t_ fail- and he wouldn’t.

Benvolio had believed in him. Juliet had believed in him. Even Tybalt, even Lady Agatha, whom he had so readily mocked just earlier that day (it seemed like a lifetime ago, now) was putting her faith in him and his scheme. With so much faith, Mercutio knew that he had to be able to do this. He would. He wasn’t about to let them all down.

A crunch of leaves to his left abruptly alerted him to the fact that he was not alone, and he straightened his posture just as Lady Montague stepped into the clearing. Almost immediately, her eyes locked on Mercutio and widened; he knew she realized that she’d been tricked.

“Mercutio.” Her voice held a clear warning, but also a terseness that Mercutio could almost imagine concealed distress. Seeing him in front of her made it clear that the spell she’d thrown at him hadn’t worked as intended- or at least not on him. She had seen better than Mercutio had Benvolio fling himself in the path of the hex; the dawning realization that she really had cursed her blood nephew, her brother’s son, was a cold and bitter one.

Causally, Mercutio rose from his perch on the bench, performing an over-exaggerated bow before straightening up and baring his teeth in a bold grin. “How nice to see you again, Lady M. It isn’t nice to keep a man waiting, you know.”

“This was all a trick.”

“Oh, no, not at all- in fact, your most bitter rival ought to be arriving any second. This was _set up_ by me- in the hopes that the two of you could finally learn to be mature adults and stop this petty bickering. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“So it is a set-up.”

“Yes,” Mercutio chuckled dryly. “That it is.”

A light flickered in the darkness at the other side of the clearing- _just in time,_ Mercutio thought as Lady Capulet stood in the light of the torch held up by a servant, her sharp eyes taking in the scene in front of her before locking sharply on Lady Montague. The woman’s entire manner- as if she hadn’t been scary enough already- had taken on a much darker aura.

“So,” she spoke between her teeth, showing off a roll of pearly whites that seemed somehow more pointed in the firelight. “It is you.”

“I’ll admit,” Lady Montague replied, her hands on her hips. “I didn’t honestly expect you to show up.”

Lady Capulet raised a hand at her old enemy’s words, and her fingers twitched just slightly; Mercutio recognized this as his time to step into his role, before the hexes began flying beyond his control. “Ladies, ladies,” he interceded briskly, physically stepping in the middle of the two glaring women. “We are gathered here today to see you work out your problems- you know, like the adults you claim to be? Stop this childish squabbling and behave like rational minds.” He tilted his head, glancing between the two witches. “She who is capable of that is capable enough to one day hold all of Verona in her palm.”

“And who are you to call us childish?” Lady Capulet’s eyes narrowed. “Insolent boy.”

Mercutio let out a laugh. “That I am, I cannot lie- I revel in all my insolence, for in a few years I will be expected to leave all of it behind entirely. I shan’t, but that’s besides the point; for when you’re grown you are expected to become a model for those younger than you. Not encourage them to climb up to high places without a safety, or set things on fire just to see what will happen- an endeavor that you can probably assume did not go the way I had hoped it would, even though I really don’t feel like talking about that particular incident, especially given the amount of time it takes eyebrows to grow back- it takes an absurd amount of time, did you know that? Anyway, my point is, adults are expected to be role models for our children- we should not corrupt them, not taunt them, not encourage them in their more wicked ways- and we should especially _not turn them into cats._ ” Glancing between his audience with raised hands, Mercutio made a flourishing gesture to the very prominent scratches on his face- the result of one of his numerous squabbles with Tybalt throughout that day. “Now who here, class, can tell me precisely _why_ we should not turn children, especially ones with absolutely fantastic anger issues, into cats?”

“Do you think this is a game, Mercutio Escalus?” Lady Montague spat. “Some sort of show? Do you dare to think this has anything to do with you?”

“All the world is but a stage, my dear woman,” Mercutio replied, pirouetting forward and landing in a crouch before Lady Montague, straightening up slowly. “And we are but the players that enact our roles before falling dead to the ground once our scenes are up. This does involve me- the both of you have, in effect, made sure of that. This involves me as much as it involves Tybalt, or Romeo, Juliet-” He paused before the mother and aunt of his closest friends, his eyes dancing wickedly. _“Benvolio._ All of them, and I. We are the pawns in your little game, and I’m here to tell you that your play is through.” Raising a hand, he glanced between both women once more, like a teacher waiting for an answer from a silent classroom.

“Now, Let me tell you exactly why you should not turn such a child into a cat- because then a very angry teenager becomes a very angry cat! I bear the scars of Tybalt’s frustration, and I ask you-” He turned to Lady Montague, who at this point looked quite baffled and well past angry. _“Really?_ In what universe did you think this was a good idea? You couldn’t have turned him into a… goldfish or something? No, it had to be something with _claws_ , and _teeth_ , and a strong dislike for _me._ ”

“My nephew-” began Lady Capulet, only to be briskly cut off as Mercutio spun over to her, grinning audaciously in her face.

“Is a cat.”

“Is not-”

“Human. Anymore. He is a cat.” The blond royal tilted his head again. “And do you see precisely why this is a problem?”

“Mercutio-” began Lady Capulet, but at this point the boy was in his element; the stage was his, and he was playing a game he was good at.

Benvolio had been telling him to do what he did best- and what he did best was make people mad.

“You’re both idiots! You’re so caught up in your squabbling that you will actually destroy anyone and everyone that gets in your way! And you couldn’t even care less!” His attention locked onto Lady Capulet, who watched him with sharp, dark eyes so much like her nephew’s that it was almost eerie. “You…” Mercutio smirked. _“You._ You’ve slept with, say, most of Verona and beyond, haven’t you? I’m surprised you even got one child out of the marriage, if your old hubby was _that_ rotten in bed, although maybe there is some truth to those rumours about you and your brother- is there _nothing_ more heartwarming than closely knit family bonds?”

“How dare you!”

The woman took a swing at him as if to slap him, but Mercutio laughingly danced out of her way; his gaze then locked onto Lady Montague behind him, and his grin widened.

“And you, Lady Montague- how’s your husband’s business coming? I ask you, of course, for it isn’t as if your husband would know- you do know how to push aside the dead weight, don’t you? Aside from running your husband’s entire career, of course, you also dip into his funds- are those lips new, or have you had them for a couple months now? I mean, we all know that what’s on your chest hasn’t been there long,” he chuckled wryly, “but-”

“The nerve!” Lady Montague practically shrieked, and for once she and Lady Capulet seemed to be in total agreement upon one thing- Mercutio Escalus was going to die tonight.

Heedless of his own doom rapidly approaching, Mercutio doggedly pushed on. “You trapped a girl in a mirror! You turned a boy into a cat! You even hexed your own nephew, and his heart is now still as stone between his ribs-”

Bringing up Benvolio, he knew, was the final straw for Lady Montague; in the face of all her flaws, as much as she was an uninvolved parent, she did hold a genuine love for her son and her orphaned nephew. “Silence!” she cried, her voice strained, caught somewhere between distress and fury.

Mercutio spun on his heel to face a positively fuming Lady Capulet. “You turned two teenagers into five year olds! You started all of this! Your nephew is a cat, your only daughter is trapped inside of a compact mirror! Because you just had to hex the Montagues, didn’t you? And now Juliet, she’s the one paying the price!”

His laugh was quickly growing manic; the prince’s nephew spun now, back and forth as if in a frantic sort of ball dance, between one furious woman and the other. They were both at breaking point and he knew that any second now it would all be over- one way or the other. “By god, how do I happen to be the most innocent party here? Do you have any idea how frightening that is? Your spells are both so impotent that they couldn’t even touch me, and now you’re both nothing but a couple of petty, worn out old bit-”

_“Silence!”_

For as strong as their dislike for each other was Mercutio was right in one respect; Lady Montague and Lady Capulet were both very similar, indeed. Their ability to scream in tandem was a feat to be admired; as was the almost uncanny sync with which they raised their arms and simultaneously directed a spell each at the prince’s nephew dancing and mocking between them. For one moment Mercutio felt both spells strike him at once, and it felt as if every cell in his entire body had exploded in a fantastic manner; but Lady Agatha’s shield worked just as well as she’d said it would. Both spells ricocheted off of him and dissolved into thin air; meanwhile, Lady Agatha finally revealed herself from the edge of the clearing with the dark shadow of Tybalt perched on her shoulder. Neither woman had time to react before all of a sudden they were being drawn together by an almost magnetic sort of attraction, their raised arms linking together of their own accord.

Lady Montague let out a shriek of pure rage; Lady Capulet kicked out and struck her hated rival in the thigh, and within seconds both women were quickly finding out just how hard it is to have a catfight when you’ve been magically joined together by the arm.

Mercutio scrambled back to avoid getting caught up in the two women’s brawl- surely they’d both be more than happy to hit him now, and while spells couldn’t touch him there was no guarantees on regular fists. Tybalt leaped onto his shoulder as Agatha breezed past him, and the two teens watched in nothing short of fascination as Agatha approached the two woman and gave them a sharp electric zap that caused them to yelp and stop their throwdown in it’s tracks.

“Cease this meaningless bickering!” the old hag demanded harshly, her hoarse voice somehow sounding even more menacing over the crackle of magic that still lingered in the air. “You two- you’re acting like children! You should be ashamed, the both of you! And to think that I instructed you both in the art of magic!” She turned to Lady Capulet first; the woman who sat hunched on the ground, twisted up in her enemies limbs- the very picture of lost dignity- was a far cry from the Lady Capulet Mercutio often almost feared. “Fioralba Cassandra de Giovanni _Capulet._ ” She spat the last name as if it were poison, before turning at once to Lady Montague. “Neressa Claudia Durante de _Montague._ ” This, too, was a curse coming from her lips; on her knees, Lady Montague flinched. Mercutio was just in awe at the sheer size of their full names- though, admittedly, his own was even worse.

“You have let these _names_ come between what strong friendship you once held as young girls, and you have fanned the fires of this feud to searing degrees! And even worse, your own children- you have cursed them not only to follow in your footsteps but to suffer for your own pettiness. For this, I should smite you here and now.”

“A- Aunt Agatha…” Lady Capulet’s voice was small; she sounded almost like a child. “Please…”

“Instead of teaching your children, your own daughter-” here she pointed at Lady Capulet- “the abilities that have run in our family through careful sculpting of our power through generations, you instead teach her hatred and spite.” Her glare settled on Lady Montague. “You both wished to harness your powers together- you, Nerezza, only wished for me to teach you the craft after Fioralba began learning. The first witch in your family and you misuse your power like this?”

She held out a hand, harshly, and the woman flinched back as if she’d been slapped. “The girl.”

Slowly, almost sheepishly, Lady Montague reached her free hand into the pocket of her cloak and pulled out a familiar silver compact mirror. As soon as it was placed in Lady Agatha’s hand, the old woman drew back and placed it on the ground; Lady Montague reluctantly uttered a few words Mercutio could not hear. There was no blinding flash of light, no magnificent crackling of electricity; only Juliet suddenly standing at the side of her ally and cousin, watching the proceedings with solemn eyes. “Juliet!” came the strangled cry of her mother, and it seemed to take all of Juliet’s willpower not to turn and look at her. 

Sensing both the discomfort of his cousin and his own opportunity, Tybalt leaped off of Mercutio’s shoulder and displayed himself before the three witches. Agatha gave Lady Montague a pointed look, and seconds later Tybalt stood before them in all his former glory (how they restored his _clothes_ , as well, Mercutio had no clue but he was infinitely grateful for the fact), looking none too worse for the wear but properly peeved at having spent the better part of his day as a feline. “Thanks,” he muttered to Lady Montague sarcastically before turning back and joining his cousin, placing two protective hands on her shoulders.

This was Mercutio’s cue; turning, he reached behind the bushes and withdrew a small, cold figure still bundled in a blanket. A sharp gasp made it clear that Lady Montague recognized her own handiwork; as Mercutio presented her hardened nephew in front of her, the woman’s eyes seemed to shine with something that could almost have been tears. “My sister’s son... “ she breathed, and the regret was unmistakeable on her face; slowly turning her head, she glanced behind her towards the bushes farther off into the clearing, near where she had emerged only a short time ago.

“Romeo!” she called hesitantly, and a head of golden curls immediately made it’s presence known. The little boy, having witnessed the entire scene and probably understanding quite little of it, took in the array of characters in front of him with understandable trepidation; a small cry escaped his mouth when he spotted his cousin, but gradually his eyes wandered over to Juliet, who gave him a small, encouraging smile and beckoned him closer. He didn’t think twice before obeying the will of the girl he loved; he joined his cousin’s side, and Mercutio laid a protective hand on his shoulder as Lady Montague first began to mutter.

The feeling of Benvolio slowly returning to flesh under his hand brought on an indescribable rush of relief; Mercutio could have nearly begun crying just to see Benvolio’s hazel eyes suddenly blinking owlishly up at him again, or to feel the warmth in his body when the little boy, lacking the strength to stand, fell back into the support of his arms.

“Mercutio?”

“You’re here, Ben,” grinned the prince’s nephew, and if anyone were to ask later he would always deny that there had been tears in his eyes. “You’re back. Everything’s okay.”

Now Lady Capulet began to mumble herself; Mercutio still couldn’t hear a word either witches were saying, but Juliet’s eyes were alive with a sharp fascination, almost as if she held a deeper understanding of everything that was going on before her. Just as before, it was Romeo who swooned first; he began to sway on his feet, and within seconds breathed a light sigh and fainted back only to be caught up in Mercutio’s free arm. Benvolio, still cradled on his lap, nestled his head further against Mercutio’s stomach.

“Sleep, Benvolio,” Mercutio muttered, stroking his fingers through his friend’s- blissfully, wonderfully alive and human- hair. “Everything will be calm again when you wake.”

Benvolio seemed to fight the power of the spell for a moment, not wanting to take his gaze off Mercutio; but gradually, he relaxed fully into the older boy’s arms, and his eyes slipped shut.


	10. A New Morning

When Benvolio awoke, his head was pounding and the first thing he registered was that he was in his own bed. In his own room. At home.

This was the most normal thing in the world, yet he couldn’t explain why it somehow felt strange to him; as if he _should_ be waking up somewhere else, only he wasn't. Had he had a strange dream? He couldn’t quite remember, and his head felt too much like it was vibrating for him to search it thoroughly at this point; pushing himself up slowly on his arms, he cringed at the warm, bright light streaming in from the window and turned on his side with a sigh.

He was not expecting to see Mercutio crouching in a chair beside his bed, but he was still utterly unsurprised. It was, after all, Mercutio; you had to expect the unexpected at times, as Benvolio had learned long ago. “Good morning sunshine,” the blond greeted, and Benvolio gave him a bleary smile of his own.

“Hey there,” he muttered. “Did I get hit by a truck or something?”

“Close,” Mercutio shrugged. “You had a spell… of fainting, in the alley yesterday while walking back to the palace. Don’t you remember?”

Benvolio’s brow furrowed; he searched his cloudy mind, shaking his head after a moment when he could find no coordinating memories. “No… I don’t,” he replied, frowning. “I’m sorry.”

Mercutio scoffed. “For what? It had something to do with… blood sugar or something. I always say to you, you need to eat more sweets, sweetheart.”

“Call me that again and you’ll get a sugarplum over your eye,” quipped Benvolio, pushing himself up in bed. “Was I much trouble?”

“Ah, no. You slept like a little boy. Funny, it was the exact same thing with Romeo a few minutes later- maybe it runs in the family.” Mercutio seemed distracted by his own fingernails; Benvolio allowed his attention to drift off, frowning at his friend’s words.

“Romeo is alright?”

“Quite,” Mercutio replied. “I’ve been with you most of the night, though. The silence was a bit too stony for my liking, but that’s no problem now that you’ve finally awakened.” He grinned. “Ready to start a new day, Ben?”

“Gladly,” Benvolio replied, accepting the hand Mercutio offered him and allowing the other to help him out of bed- with Mercutio still standing on top of the chair. “Get off,” Benvolio said, rolling his eyes. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Honestly, Ben, as long as you’re okay I couldn’t give half a damn what happens to me.”

Benvolio paused in his tracks, turning and tilting his head at the other boy in bafflement. This was still Mercutio he was talking to, wasn’t it- stubborn, hotheaded Mercutio, who argued for the sake of arguing and whose moods could change in the blink of an eye? Mercutio _never_ said he didn’t care about himself- Mercutio was an egotist, if anything. “Really, what’s gotten into you?”

The blond laughed, seeming genuinely amused by the question. “Nothing is wrong with me, by far,” he replied. “Nothing and everything all at once. There’s one question you never should ask me.” Even so, when his phone suddenly buzzed in his pocket it didn’t escape Benvolio’s notice that the other boy seemed almost grateful for the distraction. Peering over Mercutio’s shoulder, Benvolio was bewildered to find that Mercutio had received a text from someone he’d never met before- a person saved in Mercutio’s contacts as _“Juliet”_ followed by the typical array of emojis Benvolio never tried to keep track of.

 _“‘Lessons begin today, bright and early,’”_ Benvolio read out loud. _“‘T. doesn’t want me to do it. I’m so excited!’_ What does that mean?”

Mercutio shrugged, sending back a smiley face and thumbs up before snapping his phone shut and briskly sliding it in his pocket. “Nothing,” he chuckled, throwing an arm around Benvolio’s shoulders and holding him a bit tighter than usual- almost, Benvolio couldn’t help but notice, like he was trying to reassure himself that the other boy was actually here. “Nothing’s wrong at all. Ben.”

“Mercutio-”

“Let’s go find Romeo,” suggested the other boy suddenly. “I believe he was going to have tea this morning with his mother.”

This raised more eyebrows than anything- Lady Montague, actually having something to do with her teenage son? That wasn’t like his aunt at all. Benvolio searched Mercutio’s face incredulously for any hint of a joke, but he could come up with none. “What happened while I was out?”

Mercutio grinned as together the two strode down the hallway together. “Witches, Benvolio,” he replied coolly. “Witches, madwomen, and mayhem. But not to worry, it’s all over now, or be I spellbound.”

Benvolio rolled his eyes, deciding as he always had to accept Mercutio’s idiosyncrasies just as he always had and leave it at that. As they wandered through the palace, a brief flash of memory occurred to him- curled up in a chair, a large book clutched in his lap, Mercutio seeming to tower over him inexplicably.

“Hey Ben?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you like Greek mythology?”

The question seemed to come out of nowhere; Benvolio tilted his head, and odd tingle running down his spine at something he felt sure he should be able to remember. “Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking.” Mercutio turned to him, flashing a grin. “I have a book you might like…”

No doubt that Mercutio was weird. But no matter how weird he was, there was little doubt in Benvolio’s mind that he would do anything for the other boy; in the face of chaos, vengeful Greek gods, and even witches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this has been a journey. This story and this fandom has helped me get back into writing, and I'm glad for that. More than anything, I hope I've brought something unique to the fandom; and I hope that, with this story and the ones I will continue to write, I will succeed in making someone's day just a little brighter. Thank you for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> My first multi-chapter being posted to this site! I'm excited about this one- it's going to feature a lot of Mercutio and Tybalt being bitches, as well as baby Montagues, so I hope you enjoy!


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